My Father’s Bible

Where were you on January 18, 1964? I know where I was—I was ice-skating on the St. Lawrence River with my Dad.

That Saturday dawned bright and crystal clear. The cold winter air crackled with clarity making distances appear closer and sounds ring sharper. It was a typical Canadian winter day—a day to go ice-skating.

We lived so close to the banks of the St. Lawrence that my father and I laced on our skates in the house. Then we tip-toed a few yards across the dirty snow of the street to the river. There, we clambered down the banks. Our sharp skates crunched through the crust of snow on the shore.

Finally, we glided out onto the frozen river. In the sheltered areas near the shore, the ice was green and incredibly smooth—almost too smooth for our skate blades to bite into. But as we moved farther out onto the great river, which was about four miles wide at that point, the ice had frozen in little ripples sculpted by the wind. As we skated over those frozen ripples, it sent little vibrations up our legs.

We headed out toward a large island offshore—my Dad with his smooth, powerful strides, and me with my less graceful choppy style. I had to work hard just to keep up.

As we approached the island, we skated into a stand of dried yellow cattails. They stood around the island, stiff and erect, like sentinels trapped in the ice. They squeaked and rustled in the winter breeze.

My Dad noticed a catfish swimming just under the ice beneath our feet. It was trapped in a layer of water between two layers of ice and it seemed to be walking on its pectoral fins along the lower level, completely oblivious to the two strange figures looking at it from above.

As we skirted another stand of reeds, all at once my foot hit a soft spot in the ice. Suddenly, I found myself with one leg in cold water up to my thigh. Fortunately, the lower layer of ice had kept me from breaking all the way through.

My Dad hurried over, pulled me out, and laughingly restored my courage. At eleven years old, a boy needs a father for times like that.

Finally, it was time to head for home. My wet pant leg began to freeze and the ice on the fabric made funny crinkling noises as I skated. We lumbered up the river bank, across the street, and into the warmth of our kitchen, where we relived our adventures over steaming mugs of hot chocolate.

Little did I realize that that winter Saturday was the last time I would spend alone with my father. The next day in church, on Sunday morning, January 19, 1964, my Dad died of a massive heart attack. He was just 56 years old.

My father, Thomas McKnight, was not a wealthy man. He worked as a stock broker for A.M. Kidder and Co. on the Montreal Stock Exchange. He took the bus to work every day. We lived in a modest neighborhood in a rented second-storey flat that went for $65 a month.

When he died, my Dad left behind no fortune and no famous accomplishments. There was no college fund, or annuity for any of his six children. But Dad left us something much better—he left behind a family that knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their Dad loved them, and that he loved Jesus.

Other people knew that about my Dad as well. Even at the age of eleven, I noticed that people had a lot of respect for him. Over 500 people showed up at his funeral, which was far more than could fit into the little church we attended. So they simply stood outside in the street in the cold January air just to pay their respects.

As the sixth of six children in a family of modest means, there wasn’t much of my Dad’s personal belongings that my Mother was able to pass on to me. In fact, the only thing that my father left to me was his Bible. I’ve brought it along to show you today.

As you can see, it is well used. The pages are worn and frayed. Many passages have been marked and underlined. My Dad received this Bible as a Christmas gift in 1931, and he made constant use of it for the rest of his life. In fact, he was carrying it on the day he died in 1964.

What does this Bible tell me about Thomas McKnight—the man who was my father?

1. It tells me that he was a man who loved the Word.

As I said earlier, many passages have been marked and annotated. There are notes in the margins on many of the pages—all of them done in that precise printing that I think I inherited. These things are evidence that he spent many hours in reading and studying this book.

In the flyleaf, there’s a schedule of daily BIble readings for 1964. He only got 19 days into that. The reading for January 19 is Mark 11:1-11. That’s the passage which tells about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Little did my Dad realize that on Jan. 19, he would be making his own entrance—his entrance into glory.

In the flyleaf, there’s also a couple of pages of sermon notes of a message that he gave at New Years. My Dad, although he was not ordained, and only had an 8th grade education, was often called upon to preach.

His message that day was entitled “Pressing Onward”, and its text was Phil 3:14:

Philippians 3:14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Let me read to you an excerpt from his sermon notes:

“Paul was not one to rest on his laurels. He had attained to a degree of spirituality not reached by many. Yet he could say that he was a man of one mind and purpose and that was to know Christ. All of his accomplishments and attainments were to be forgotten in the all-absorbing passion of his life. Paul had a mark in his life—even the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

“Have we a mark before us? What is our aim in life? Our ambition? Let us this New Year start with a goal before us and let us bend every effort to the attainment of that high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

I wonder if my Dad knew, as he preached that message, that he was just two weeks from the finish line?

He loved the Word of God, and it shaped his life.

2. My father’s Bible shows me that he loved the church:

There are a lot of Christians who claim to love the Lord and love the Word, but they don’t love the church. My Dad certainly wasn’t one of them.

Inside the front cover of my father’s Bible there is a covenant of church membership, and I can vouch for the fact that he took that covenant seriously. The church played a major role in my Dad’s life and in the life of our family. As long as I can remember, we were in church on Sunday. As the father goes, so goes the family.

Our little local church had a membership of about 150. (By the way, it was called Onward Gospel Church—I wasn’t always a Baptist, you know!). That little church was a major focus of our life. I made lifelong friends there. I met my wife there.

And over the years, that little church, tucked away on a side-street in Verdun, Quebec has had an influence out of all proportion to its size. Pastors and missionaries came from that church and went all over the world to serve Jesus Christ—people like Ken Hurst, the director of CCEF here in the Lehigh Valley—and many others. And they were equipped and discipled because people like my Dad were devoted to the church.

Somehow it seems fitting that he died in church, because that’s where he wanted to be. Don’t get me wrong—he loved to spend time with his family. We were never neglected because he was off at some church meeting.

In fact, I never remember there being any of the tension between church-time and family-time that you sometimes hear people complaining about today. For us, church time was family time and family time was church time. It wasn’t an either-or situation.

My Dad was the S.S. Superintendent—the Carl Ringer of his church. Inside his Bible, I find all sorts of S.S. materials: lesson plans, agendas for S.S. meetings, little printed invitations to Sunday School. There’s even an admission ticket that says Admit One—This is Your Free Ticket to Attend Onward Gospel Church Sunday School Every Sunday Morning at 9:45 a.m.

These things tell me that he was a man who loved the church.

3. There’s one thing more that his Bible tells me. It tells me that he was a man who loved God.

My father was largely self-taught. Although he never graduated from high school, he was a learned man. He read voraciously. And he often wrote poetry.

In his poetry, he expressed his deep love for the Lord. Tucked into the flyleaf of his Bible, I found a poem that he wrote. It is entitled “The Fruits of the Spirit” and it describes how my father wanted the character of Christ to be formed in him.

Let me read a couple of the verses to you:

Thou God of love, true love divine,

Grant that from me this grace may shine.

With loving favor, kindly deed,

Use me the hungry throng to feed,

And to Thy blessed will resign.

Thou God of joy, true joy expressed

By those found leaning on thy breast,

Unspeakable joy and full of glory,

That keeps thy child from fret or worry,

This fruit show forth in every test.

And the poem goes on through peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self control. My father’s desire was that these characteristics be fully formed in him.

I couldn’t help but notice that the most well-worn pages of my father’s Bible are the Psalms. Those intensely personal passages where the Psalmist expresses from the bottom of his heart his yearning for the Lord. He says there

Psalm 42:1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

I think that my father resonated with passages like that.

So it’s only a Bible—an old, worn out book. But what a lot it tells me about this man who was my father. He’s been gone for over 31 years now, but his life is still making an impact on me and on my brothers and sisters. In the eleven short years that I knew him, he wrote some things on my heart that will always be there.

Men, what about you? What sort of life message are you writing on the tablets of your children’s hearts? How are they going to remember you? Are they going to remember you as a man who was devoted to sports, or to cars, or to computers, or to his career? Or are they going to remember you as a man who was devoted to God and His Word and His church and his family?

Fathers, just as my Dad left me a legacy, we are all leaving our children a legacy. Their hearts are like a blank sheet of paper, and the recording pen moves every day. What’s being recorded there? How much time is left before the ink runs out?

Next year, the Olympic Games will be held in Atlanta, Georgia. One of the most exciting events is the 400 meter relay race. There are four members on each team. Each runner runs 100 meters and passes the baton off to the next runner.

The most crucial phase of any relay race comes with the passing of the baton. That is usually where the race is won or lost. If there is not a clean exchange between one runner and the next—if the baton is dropped—the race is lost.

Christianity is a lot like a relay race. We pass the baton of faith from generation to generation; from father to son and mother to daughter. Our most important job as parents is not to make sure our children get a college education, or excel at some sport. It is not to make sure that they get a shot at the American Dream.

Our most important job as fathers is to get the baton of the gospel safely into the hands of our children. Unless they grasp it firmly and run with it, it doesn’t matter what else we accomplish with our lives.