What the Rancher Knew About Coyotes

Tom Hernandez ran cattle on four hundred acres outside Marfa, Texas. He told his new ranch hand something on the first day that the young man never forgot: "Coyotes test the fence line every night. They're looking for weakness — a gap, a sag, a place where the wire's gone slack. Fix the fence every morning, and they'll move on. Neglect it once, and they'll find the opening."

Every dawn, Tom walked the perimeter. He tightened wire, replaced posts, mended what the wind and weather had loosened overnight. It was tedious, unglamorous work. But in twenty-three years of ranching, he never lost a calf to coyotes. His neighbors, the ones who skipped the daily walk, couldn't say the same.

James understood this principle long before barbed wire existed. "Submit yourselves, then, to God," he wrote. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." The enemy of your soul operates like those coyotes — circling, testing, probing for the place where your resolve has gone slack. He is persistent but not patient. He is opportunistic but not omnipotent.

Submission to God is the daily fence walk — prayer, scripture, obedience in the small things. And resistance is not a single dramatic showdown. It is the quiet, repeated decision to mend what the world has loosened in you. Do that faithfully, and the predator moves on. He always does.