The Saddled Horse

We raised our kids on a little hobby farm and, amongst many other kinds of animals we kept on the place, there were my precious horses. From a very young age, I have absolutely loved horses. I never thought of them as an idol, but as I grew in my faith it became clear: these creatures captivated my heart, my mind . . . they consumed my time, my finances. In many ways, horses had taken the place in my heart that should have been reserved for God. 

When we moved to town as I began my ministry in earnest, we found homes for all the horses we had at the time except for my horse, Levi, who moved to my daughter’s farm. However, within a year or so of leaving the farm, all of them were gone. Not just gone, but dead. The last to go was my big, black gelding. Several years later, I was taking a class on Ezekiel at a local seminary and it occurred to me that all my "idols" had been "struck down." The loss of Levi was especially graphic and painful, occurring right before my eyes. And so, the vision that I received came with especially powerful emotions. 

In this dream, I went to check our horses that had been out to pasture and which I had, honestly, not been checking on as often as I should have. As I approached a pasture, which was not really the one we had had in real life but was ours in the dream, several horses began to emerge from the trees and shrubs. They were our horses, the ones we had had at the farm. I remember in particular that Spanish and Levi came out together—not surprising as they were buddies in real life. But when Levi came out, I could tell right away that something was terribly wrong. 

First of all, he was saddled and bridled! And it wasn’t my tack. Why was he saddled? And whose tack was it anyway? And then, it got even worse. I could see he was not right. He was sluggish and slow to move. He had the inward-turned gaze of a horse in great pain. He wasn’t very aware of anything going on around him—all his attention was tuned in to whatever was causing such pain. As he came closer, the horrifying truth was evident. He was gutted—slit clean down the middle of the belly from front to back. There was no way he could have been alive, let alone walking, in real life. And yet, he staggered out.

As I awoke, it was very clear to me that Levi represented God’s Word. John 1 tells us that Jesus is The Word and Jesus is God. So essentially, what I had been idolizing in life represented what I should have been idolizing all along. Not just in words, but with every fiber of my being. Just like I had failed to be looking after my horses in my dream, I realized I had not been looking after God’s truth either. I was a church attender who infrequently read my Bible, when it was convenient, looking for the parts I wanted to hear that would help with whatever I needed at the moment. 

Now, after leaving my job for the second time and as I was starting to really dig into God’s Word and realizing how the world was seeing and/or portraying God, the imagery in the vision made perfect sense. As a culture, even as a Christian community, we have been adding things that we want to believe even when God’s word doesn’t say it—thus the strange tack being "added." Furthermore, God’s truth in many ways has been essentially "gutted." We have ripped out the parts we don’t like or don’t understand. 

The state of my beloved horse in my dream was precisely what we were doing to God’s sacred Word. Adding and taking away parts as though we have any right or authority to do so. Indeed, scripture warns us that we are not to add or subtract from His commands. And yet, if we look at our culture today, this practice is rampant. I have come to call it the "Mister Potato Head" god—people pick and choose parts like it was a toy to play with. While scripture teaches that the gates of hell will not prevail against God’s church—what I saw in my vision with the weak, sickly, staggering horse could very well represent the state of the organized church/religion in America . . . weak, sickly, and staggering. 

“…your altars will be laid waste and devastated,

your idols smashed and ruined,

your incense altars broken down,

and what you have made wiped out.”

Ezekiel 6:6b NIV

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word

was with God, and the Word was God.”

John 1:1 NIV

“Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—

guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.”

2 Timothy 1:14 NIV

“Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it,

but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”

Deuteronomy 4:2 NIV

“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll.  And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City,

which are described in this scroll.”

Revelation 22:18-19 NIV