December 8, 2003 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The following is from Foundation magazine (Fundamental Evangelical Association, Los Osos, California), October 1983:

One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home as good calves should
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.
Since then three hundred years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bellweather sheep
Pursued the trail o’er hill and glade
Through those old woods a path was made.

And many men would in and out
And dodged and turned and bent about
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ‘twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed -- do not laugh --
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun.
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And thus, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And man two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed this zigzag calf about
And o’er this crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
-- Sam Walter Foss

This poem perfectly illustrates the fact that we are creatures of habit. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes bad. We must be careful that “the way we’ve always done it” doesn’t limit our service to God, and that our traditions don’t render the Word of God to none effect.

“And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own traditions” (Mark 7:9).