With apologies to all you horse people (including the one I live with) I will have to side with scripture.  There are references all through the Psalms and prophets about the foolishness of putting your trust in a horse or in a chariot.  Psalm 34:17 puts it nicely:

The horse is a vain hope for deliverance; for all its strength it cannot save.

I’ve had a close encounter of the equine kind that has left me forever wary of those animals comprised of 1,000 pounds of muscle and hoof with no brakes and a very small brain relative to its mass.  But even if I wasn’t afraid of horses, I would have to recommend that we take seriously the biblical admonition that they are a vain hope.

I have to give the horse its due.  Until the invention of the locomotive, there was nothing faster upon which a human might travel.  They are strong as… well, a horse.  They were the cutting edge, high-speed attack force of all the ancient armies. Horses were the pride of Israel’s army.  But they are not God. 

We’re not Bronze Age people; we know the horse is a vain hope for deliverance.

But what is the horse you’re riding?  What do we put our hopes on instead of God?  Is it a bank account; our brains and brawn; artificial intelligence; DNA manipulation; the strength of the nation? 

It’s tempting to put our trust in a tool we can control instead of our wild, untamed God who calls us to love and hold on tight.

Prayer:  Almighty One, you call worlds into being and you hold our lives in the palm of your hand; grant us courage to entrust our lives to your terrifying power, your wildness, and your unrelenting love. Amen.