Charles Knowlton (1927-2013)

One day, while driving through a Wal-Mart parking lot, I saw a small truck slowly rolling backwards—and heading straight for a ravine at the far edge of the lot. I pulled up beside the truck and noticed that it was unoccupied. With some effort I stopped it, but I could not get it to stay until I wedged a small stone behind the rear tire. Looking back, I  assume the driver found the truck and I assume he might have said, “Wow, I thought I had it in gear!” Those are famous last words: “I thought.”

In 1839, a want ad appeared in a New York newspaper: “Wanted: a few good men to train for a dangerous, low pay, weather exposed assignment.” Applicants would need to leave behind their former walks of life and become expert horsemen. The agency that placed the ad was swamped with replies, but not every applicant proved to be up to the challenge. Many were called, but ultimately—as the ad indicated—relatively few were chosen. Thus the Pony Express was formed.

Looking at old family photos, especially ones concerning church-related affairs, a person is struck by how well people dressed. Many people were poor, but when it came to how they dressed for occasions where God was involved, they wore their best. These were God-fearing people and they took Proverbs 3:7 to heart: “Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil.” Here, the word fear, in the original Hebrew, means to have respect or awe for something. Do we have that special type of fear?

When I was a youngster, we lived close to a blacksmith’s shop. The smith was a man trained to take a piece of metal, heat it, beat it, and cool it—thereby producing needed and useful articles. His tools were simple, his strength was great, and his eye was keen. The blacksmith’s implements were few: a hammer, anvil, and forge. His forge was used to produce heat; his anvil was a large piece of solid metal to pound on with the hammer. He performed a vital service for the local community, and what he taught us remains relevant today.

In the days before modern mass communications, it was the church building or the schoolhouse where most would go to find out the news of what was happening in their communities. News from farther away would come when travelers passed through. It took time for news to travel, so most people were either out of date or entirely ignorant of what was going on in the rest of the world.