“What do you mean, you are not the dark horse?” she said, trotting up next to me. “Do you not know yourself?”
 
At that I looked down at my white leg, expecting to see it reflect up at me as it always did at night. But all I saw was the faint outline of a leg, hardly visible in the approaching darkness. I stamped it, thinking it was caked with mud. I tried scratching it with my nose. Suddenly, with a combined sense of amazement, joy, and humility, I realized what had happened. I had been singed by the fire! I was as black as this burned-out valley! I, too, was a dark horse.

I have learned that when writing fiction (in this case: allegory) that some of the deepest insights reveal themselves only in the writing, not before. Suddenly you get what may be the whole reason for the story, and you didn’t even know it was there when you started. The astonishment I write about here is truly mine at discovering this, not just something fabricated for the story.

For years I had relied upon my natural gifts and abilities for confidence. Call it anointing or call it pedigree, it was what set me apart and ultimately isolated me from others in my mind.

We all have natural and spiritual gifts and talents. They will actually work against us if we use them for confidence, identity or anything we rely upon for strength. God wants us trusting in Him alone. In God’s economy, everything is backwards: our weaknesses are our strengths; our strengths are our weaknesses.

Paul says the same thing in Philippians 3:5-9, “Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

This is Paul, stamping and scratching his once-white leg. What is it that you have that you have been counting on? Are you willing to throw it on the rubbish heap and trust in Christ alone?