On the Shoulders of Giants

by Dan Bouchelle

There is a saddle in my office. It belonged first to my father when he fancied himself a young cowboy. When my father left home, he sold the saddle to my grandfather who used it for over thirty-five years. When I was growing up, nothing was more exciting to me than going to see my grandparents, riding horses, and being a cowboy for a week. I loved to feel the power of the steed beneath me as we engulfed the pasture, tears blowing out of the corners of my eyes from the sheer strength of the wind in my face. But the main reason I loved to ride was that it connected me to my father and my grandfather. It made me feel like part of a grand tradition of men whose lives and characters I wanted to imitate. I always rode the same saddle. That saddle. It has became a precious reminder of my legacy and the positive aspects of my Bouchelle ancestry. It symbolizes a way of life whose virtues I wish to preserve. So when my granddad sold his last horses, I talked him out of that saddle. It reminds me that I am not a product of my own making but the product of many years of family tradition to which I have added my own layer.

We are products of our heritage. In the church sometimes we talk as if we skipped from the first century to the twentieth. In reality, we are products of two thousand years of history and about four thousand years of faith that stretches back to Abraham of the Chaldeans. Our heritage includes Joshua, Deborah, Solomon, Abigail, Nehemiah, and Mary. It also includes Origen, Augustine, Martin Luther, Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone, David Lipscomb, and innumerable Christian women whose names history has overlooked. We may not like everything in our family tree, but our heritage is ours; we don’t know ourselves if we don’t know where we came from.

We either pass on our heritage or we react against it. Either way it shapes us. We did not invent the church. It was graciously given to us by those who passed on the faith from former days. If we reach great heights, it will only be because we stand on the shoulders of giants. If we forget where we come from, we will forget who we are. If we forget who we are, we will forget where we are going and what we are about. I think we need a few more reminders. We didn’t arrive here on our own; we were carried by others.