My Father’s Bible

Saturday, Jan. 18, 1964 was a brilliantly sunny day. The City of Montreal was locked in the grip of winter, and it was one of those days where the ice cold air fairly crackled with clarity. Distances appeared closer and sounds rang sharper. It was a typical Canadian day to go ice-skating. So that’s what my father and I did.

We lived in the Montreal suburb of Verdun, on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, right where Wellington Street meets Lasalle Blvd. We were so close to the river that my father and I laced up our skates in the house. Then we tip-toed a few yards across the dirty snow of Wellington St. to the boardwalk. There, we hoisted ourselves over the railing and clambered down the river bank. Our feet crunched through the crust of snow on the shore.

Finally, we glided out onto the frozen river. In the sheltered areas near shore, the river 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 waterway, which was about four miles wide in front of Verdun at that point, the ice had frozen in little ripples sculpted by the wind. As we skated over that washboard surface, it sent tingling vibrations up our legs.

As we skated along, my Dad told me stories about how, in the old days, they used to run a narrow-gauge train track out onto the St. Lawrence River at that point, and they would saw great blocks of ice out of the river, load them onto flat cars, and bring them back to town. They would store those great blocks of ice in an ice house on Rielle Ave, packing it with sawdust for insulation. In the days before refrigerators, people would get St. Lawrence River ice for their ice boxes from that ice house, even in the hot days of summer.

We headed across the channel toward Ile des Soeurs—Nun’s Island—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 Nun’s island, we skated into a stand of dry yellow bullrushes. They stood around the island like sentries, stiff and at attention, trapped in the ice. And when the wind would blow, they would squeak and rustle as they rubbed against each other – a sound that no one but God usually heard.

My Dad spotted 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 ice cold water up to my thigh. That was a shock! 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.

We decided to head for home. My one soaking 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 Wellington St., 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 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.

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 #58 bus to work every day. We lived in a modest neighborhood in Verdun in a rented second-storey flat that went for about $65 a month. We didn’t have any property, didn’t even have a yard. The height of relaxation was to sit on the balcony with our feet up on the railing in the hot humid days of summer.

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

People outside my family sensed that there was something special about my Dad as well. Even at the age of eleven, I noticed that people had a lot of respect for him. When he died, over 500 people showed up at his funeral, which was far more than could fit into Onward Gospel Church, the little church we attended in Verdun. So people who couldn’t fit into the funeral simply stood outside in the street in the cold January air just to be there and 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. It has been recovered and rebound at least once. 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, this book was what he was carrying in his hand on the day he died.

If this were the only physical evidence I had of his life, what would this Bible tell me about Thomas McKnight—this man who was my father?

1. It would tell 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 his precise printing that I think I may have 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 Sunday, January 19 is Mark 11:1-11. That’s a passage which tells about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Little did my Dad realize that on Jan. 19, he would be making an entry of his own—his entrance into eternity.

In the flyleaf, there’s also a couple of pages of sermon notes of a message that my Dad gave at New Years. My Dad, although he was not an ordained minister, 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:

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

There were three points in his sermon, and they were alliterated. (I think I may have inherited that from him too!)

1. Pressing onward with purpose

2. Pressing onward with perseverance

3. Pressing onward with power

Let me read to you a brief portion of 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 had any inkling, as he preached that message, that he was just two weeks from the finish line of his own life?

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

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

I think that there may be some Christians nowadays 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.

Onward Gospel Church never had a membership of more than about 150. Everybody knew everybody else. It was like an extended family. 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 insignificant little church, tucked away on a nondescript 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. When we lived in Pennsylvania, I had the privilege of partnering with a Christian counseling organization who had come to Christ through the youth ministry of Onward Gospel Church. The current pastor of the Peoples Church of Montreal, Frank Humphreys, found Christ at Onward Gospel Church. George Bradford, the district superintendent of the AGC grew up at Onward Gospel Church. These people were equipped and discipled because committed men like Thomas McKnight were devoted to the church.

Somehow it seems fitting that he died in church, because that’s where he loved 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 people sometimes complain about today. For us, church time was family time and family time included church time. It wasn’t an either-or situation.

Among other things, my Dad was the S.S. Superintendent of the 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.

There’s a S.S. paper in here called the Light. And in the Jan. 19, 1964 issue, the lead story is entitled “Christianity in Castro’s Cuba.” Imagine after all these years, Castro is still in charge of Cuba!

These little bits and pieces of paper tell me that my father 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 Fruit of the Spirit” and is based on that famous passage in Galatians 5:22-23. The poem describes how my father wanted God to produce the fruit of the Spirit 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 because he loved the Lord.

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 37 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.

On Father’s Day 2001, I want to ask us as men “What about us? What sort of life message are we writing on the tablets of our children’s hearts? How are they going to remember us? Are they going to remember us as men who were devoted to sports, or cars, or computers, or career? Or are they going to remember us as men who were devoted to God, His Word, His church, and our families?

We are all leaving our children a legacy. Their hearts are like blank sheets of paper, and the recording pen moves every day. What’s being written there? How much time is left before the ink runs out?

As most of you know, on the Victoria Day weekend, just a few weeks ago, Ernie and Eilleen Wallace were involved in a terrible accident up in Muskoka. Their mobile home had a propane leak and it blew up. Ernie and Eilleen were at the epicenter of the blast. They were hurled through the air dozens of feet, received 2^(nd) and 3^(rd) degree burns, and their summer home was utterly destroyed.

By the grace of God, Ernie and Eilleen were spared. They continue to recover from their burns, but they lost virtually everything in the trailer.

Two weeks after the explosion, their daughter Sharon had to go up to the trailer to try to find anything that was salvageable. In particular, her father had told her to try to find his Bible which had been given to him by his father.

As Sharon got to the site of the accident, she was overcome by the enormity of what had happened, and the extent of the destruction. It was a gray, drizzly Friday, and there was no one else around. Her already low spirits got even lower as she probed through the wreckage for the next two and a half hours. There was no sign of the Bible, and everything else was ruined.

Finally, with dark clouds gathering and the rain intensifying, Sharon turned to one last place she hadn’t looked. A large piece of the trailer, about 12 x 8 feet had been blown down into a ravine. She thought that maybe she should look under that.

Slowly and carefully, she clambered down into the ravine, and lifted that big piece of wreckage up. And lo and behold, nestled under it was her father’s Bible. It was wet, but it was whole. Hurled there by the force of the blast, it had fallen open to a back page where there were some hand-written notes.

As Sharon looked closer, she could see that the handwriting was not her father’s, but her grandfather’s. And the verse he had written out in what was now her father’s Bible was Deuteronomy 33:25. which says in part “…as thy days, so shall thy strength be.”

That message in her father’s Bible was a message from God to Sharon, and through her, a message to all of us. Life is short. We don’t know how many days we have. But let’s use our strength to invest in the things of God—the thingss that really matter.