Horsin’ Around 11/03/19

Kentucky Horse Park Campground, Lexington, Kentucky

The LORD detests the thoughts of the wicked, but those of the pure are pleasing to him.  ~ Proverbs 15:26

In just a couple of months, we’ve gone from having virtually no churches to visit, to having an abundance to choose from.  In fact, there were so many around us here at the Horse Park, that we didn’t even check out all of them!

This morning found us at Harmony Christian Church, where they may have harmony (who’s to say after one visit?), but they certainly don’t seem to share fellowship with one another.  Four minutes before the service was due to begin, there were only a dozen of us in the fairly large sanctuary aka worship center.  I know.  I counted.  And no one was sitting with anyone else – what I mean is that there were singles and couples scattered about, but no one was sitting together with others.  Even as people started filing in a minute before start time, they didn’t sit with anyone else.  It was very strange.  Even when the place was filling up, people would leave a seat or two between them and the next person.

Their communion was a little different too.  The song leader said a prayer and dismissed the congregation to go to an outside wall where the elements were sitting on a podium.  People just walked up and partook.  Some consumed it as they were standing there, others took it back to their seats with them.  But the point is, there was no explanation of what they were doing and no personal reflecting time.  It seemed very perfunctory to us.  We prefer a few minutes to sit quietly and contemplate the personal meaning behind the sacrament.

Since the church meets in a former large grocery store (or some kind of retailer) building, we assumed it was a fairly young church, but the pastor mentioned that they’d been a church for 28 years, and from his age, I’d guess he was in on the start-up.  Apparently a very intelligent man, he spoke of speaking German fluently and being able to read French and Spanish as well.  So including English, that’s four.  Plus as a pastor one would assume he also knows Greek and possibly some Hebrew and Aramaic as well.  (those are the languages the original Biblical text was written in)

His message was a good one, aimed at the professing believers in the room.  It was the last of a series on the letters to the seven churches mentioned in Revelation.  He titled it “7 text messages from Jesus”.  This one was focused on the church in Laodicea.  It emphasizes shaking people (people claiming to be Christians) out of their lethargy.  The verses in Revelation 2:14-22 speak to the church there as being neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm.  It speaks to their wealth and self-sufficiency.  And it speaks to their blindness and nakedness, among other things.  It also encourages them that if they heed Christ’s discipline and overcome their sinfulness, He will welcome them.

At first, we believed the Pastor would do a re-cap for us on what we’d learned under our own Pastor Mike.  There’s nothing wrong with recapping.  In fact, it just helps to secure the information firmly in our minds, but today there were also additional things to ponder.

The reference to hot/cold contains a reference that everyone in Laodicea at the time would totally understand, but also applies to contemporary believers.  The town was located in a valley and they had no water supply, so they built a 6-mile pipeline from the top of a high mountain to the north that contained cold spring water, in order to have water.  By the time that water traveled those 6 miles though, it was no longer cold, but lukewarm.  It was no longer refreshing.  And to the south, there sat a mountain with hot springs.  Springs that were considered to hold healing properties.  The spiritual implication is that the cold water is spiritually refreshing, the hot water is spiritually healing, but the church didn’t take advantage of either.  They were lukewarm.  Going through the motions, but with no enthusiasm.

Another fact about Laodicea was that they were very wealthy people.  They were the financial center, the Wall Street of their day.  And for those who weren’t involved in the financial world, another possibility was raising black sheep and selling the wool.  The wool from these sheep, found exclusively in Laodicea, was hungrily sought after, so not only did the product make money, but those in distribution did as well.  And if that wasn’t your thing, there was the eye salve.  Laodicea made this exclusive eye salve said to cure just about anything eye related.  And so, the people, (including those in the church) were living the delusion of self-sufficiency, instead of in the truth that all comes from God.

The longer you’re a Christian, the more likely you are to fall into these two pitfalls.

1.  Self-serving.  Your focus becomes yourself and what you want – in life, in the church, in worship, etc. – rather than what you can do to serve others.  You one day wake up to discover that you’ve become lukewarm.  You are no longer the living water that Jesus calls us to for the benefit of others. 

2.  Self-sufficiency.  You’ve acquired/achieved, what you want without help from others or from God.  Or so you believe.  You’ve forgotten that it is only with God’s providence that you are where you are.  You’ve forgotten that everything you are and have comes from Him.  Deuteronomy 8:17-18 are two of my favorite verses, You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.”  But remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth.

The Pastor went on to tell a shortened (but no less passionate) version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.  You know that story . . . the vain Emperor who loved fashion and showing off his wealth to his empire, two clever men who pretended to be tailors who convinced the Emperor and all the people that the clothes they made would be invisible to ‘the unfit and fools’.  The fact that they never made anything at all, except a boatload of money, and the little child who was the only one untarnished and brave enough to point out that the Emperor was parading around town in his underwear.

It becomes easy for us to walk around in our invisible spiritual clothes.  We’ve gone through all the motions of having them made and putting them on, but we live in a delusion.  We are not as spiritually clothed as we would like to believe, and for fear of being discovered, we accept the delusion.

So what keeps us from these pitfalls?  Zeal.  Most of us don’t like that word connected with Christianity.  It brings visions of long-haired, unkempt, Bible-thumping screamers on street corners.  But that’s not what zeal means.  The actual definition is “uncompromising enthusiasm”.  Don’t know what that means?  Just watch the fans at any sporting event.  Or check out your neighbor’s (or your) home with team themed bric-a-brac or parties.  Or the enthusiasm of Monday morning quarterbacks.

If we can raise that much enthusiasm for a sporting event that we have no part of, why do we find it so hard to be enthusiastic about our spiritual family as children of God?  A family we’re members of, a home we have a stake in.  Why do we find it so easy to ‘lay down the welcome mat’ for those who root for the same sports team, or even welcome rivals, but find it so difficult to lay down the welcome mat for our fellow Christians, and more importantly non-Christians?

Where is our zeal for the One Who saved and preserves us?  The One from Whom all blessing flow?

This afternoon, we joined Horse Farm Tours and a former jockey named, Ernie for a 3 ½ hour drive around town filled with information, and also included a couple of chances to stretch our legs.  Ernie was born and raised right here in Lexington, Kentucky.  He became a jockey at age 16 in 1962, and weighed in at a whopping 84 pounds.  He traveled all over the place racing horses until he retired from being a jockey in 1978, weighing 104.  He then went on to be a horse trainer until 2014.  I say all that to say that we were definitely in good hands today!  You can’t ask for more experience than that.  😊

I’ve learned to take notes on my phone whenever we do things like this, although my fear is that the guides will think me rude for being on my phone the whole time, so I usually tell them at some point what I’m up to.  Here are the things I jotted down:

If you notice in the farm pictures, you’ll see a particular type of fencing with a number of horizontal slats.  That’s because they’ve learned that horses are much less likely to jump the fence if there appear to be additional barriers.  You may also notice that the corners are rounded instead of 90-degree angles.  This is because the horses are bred to run, so they sometimes go racing along the fencing and owners found that they’d run into the corner instead of rounding it.  Hence the rounded corners.

One farm, called Calumet (Yes, actually.  They are the baking powder company.  😊) has 45 miles of fence and owns 780 acres, which expands whenever more land becomes available to purchase.  So far, this farm has produced 7 Derby winners, 2 Preakness winners and several others that I didn’t catch.  The stables are made from cherry wood with nickel fixtures.  They have a 1-mile practice track on their farm, and a pool for the horses.  This multi-million-dollar business was started by William Monroe Wright (cousin to Orville and Wilber) from Dayton, Ohio in 1889 with $3,500.  Apparently, there were years and years and years of wars – both in public and in Congress – about cream of tartar vs baking powder and their ingredients.  Mr. Wright retired, leaving the business to his son, Warren around 1909 and began the Calumet horse farm.  Warren sold the business to General Foods in 1929 for $32,000,000.

We stopped at Keeneland race track.  This is a successful, non-profit track (the only one in the country) that hosts many races and is upgrading to attract even more prominent race horses.  Currently, you can go spend the day watching (and gambling, or as Ernie calls it, make a donation) for only $5 entrance fee.  The barns were built in 1887, the house on the property was the manager’s home.  Their first ‘important’ race was in 1936.  You can’t see the house very well, but in 1825, Lafayette (of Revolutionary War fame) stayed in the house, with soldiers camped out on the lawn.

The barns at Keeneland can accommodate 2,000 horses.  They have regular sales here and generally complete 400 sales a day.  They just recently sold a filly (a female that’s less than 4 years old) for $8.2 million.  The highest price paid that day was $13.3 million for a 1 ½ year old stallion that had never been saddled.

There’s a very strict dress code on race days at Keeneland.  Men in jackets and ties, women in dresses or a long pant-suit, absolutely no denim of any kind or color.

At every race, at every track around the country, they have lots of rules.  One of which is the amount of weight the horses carry.  It must be 126# – no more, no less.  Unless it’s a female horse, in which case, theirs is 121#.  This weight includes the jockeys.  If they weigh less, iron weights are added. 

Once a jockey hits 115#, it’s time to start looking for other work.  Ernie didn’t state why.  Also among the rules, the jockey’s are weighed before (I’m not sure of the timing, but at the very least, it was before practice) and again immediately after the race to make sure their diet didn’t produce more or less weight for the 126# weight restriction.

Most tracks run 12-14 horses per race.  Keeneland is a 1 1/16-mile track.

On this day, they currently have 340 horses stabled on the grounds.  One guy has 40!

Ernie took us to a stable and let us pet the horses.  They were eager to see us, very friendly!  It wasn’t long before we discovered why.  Ernie had a pocket full of round peppermint candies he allowed us to feed them.  Yay!!  Most of these horses were worth upwards of $300,000, but one was worth much more.  A couple of million if memory serves.  That one wasn’t lured by treats or coaxing.  He just stood in back of his stable in the dark and wouldn’t even look at any of us.  It’s pretty bad when you get snubbed by a horse!  Lol

We drove past a piece of property that Ernie told us was owned by a (the??) Saudi King. 

At another farm, we were told the owner came from Chili a couple of years ago and bought about 30 brood mares at a Keeneland sale for a total of $27,000,000 and started his racing and breeding business.  Rumor has it that the guy’s mom is the richest woman in Chili.

Time to visit a farm with an extremely successful breeding business.  The farm’s name is Hill n’ Dale. 

No one was around, and Ernie had been hoping to show us their current prize stallion, Curlin, but Curlin had already been brought in from the pasture for the day.  To demonstrate the profitability of the horse business, he told us that Curlin was bred with 160 mares in each of the past two years, 2018 & 2019.  Each owner paid $125,000 for the privilege.  But there are other stallions at this farm.  Fourteen in fact.  And each of them brought in $80 – 100,000 for each stud fee.  No word as to how many of those there were.  Every breeding is done naturally.  There’s no artificial insemination in the racing business.  Before the mare is bred, she’s put together with a horse they call a “teaser”.  His only job is to let the owners know if the mare is truly ready to breed.  Ernie says people have tried to get around that by using various types of equipment, but the only way to really tell is by using a teaser.  Mother Nature never lies.  Besides breeding, this farm also races.  One of their horses brought in $22,500,000 in winnings this year.

Speaking of stud fees.  Seattle Slew was bought for $17,000 and was the only horse to win the 1977 Triple Crown while undefeated.  He went on to sire 44 major race winners.  His stud fee?  $800,000!  Horses can be used for stud right up to (or near) their dying day if they remain healthy.  Seattle Slew died in his sleep at the age of 28 – – – exactly 25 years to the day of his Triple Crown win.  He’s the only race horse buried standing up.  He’s buried on the property, embalmed and in an oak casket with silk trim.

Most race horses that die, only their head, heart and hooves are buried. 

Two other horses (including Man O War) are buried intact, but they’re lying down.

How did Kentucky Bluegrass get its name?  It’s because if you let it grow to its natural height of 2-3 feet (instead of mowing it down), it forms clusters of small blue flowers that blossom at the tops of the stems.  That Ernie!  What a fountain of information!

We had a wonderful day exploring and learning about the world of horse racing!