Thoughts of a Mrs. Modern-Day Mountain Woman Chapter 16

Chapter 16: A knifeless man is a lifeless man.

When Mr. Mountain Man mentioned that he loves to give knives as gifts, he wasn’t kidding! I have a blue edelweiss scaled Swiss Army knife that I received our first year as a married couple, a multi-tool knife that was my gift for having our first child, a red multi-tool for a Valentine’s day gift one year, a Leatherman Micra that he gave me for Christmas one year, and many more. I use almost all of them from time to time. Several I have asked him to “hold onto” for me so that they can be used by him until I’m ready. He likes to have his family and friends well provided for with knives, and is there any gift that is as useful as a good knife?

I remember when I got my first knife as a child. It was a pink mini Swiss Army knife which I received from a family friend. It is still now on my keychain and goes with me everywhere. When I began teaching at a school in Missouri, I had to hold onto several farm boys knives as they would fall out of their pockets during P.E. while doing sit-ups. In our modern world, kids aren’t allowed to have pocket knives in school, for understandable and sad reasons. There are so many times when I have been teaching though, that a pocket knife is the only solution to a problem. Need the stapler unjammed? Use the pliers on your multitool. A pencil that just won’t sharpen? Use a knife blade to sharpen it to a perfect point. Need to get that dried up gum off of the underside of the desk? A nail file works perfectly for this. Knives are an essential tool to our everyday life.

Why is it that this simple and effective tool is now considered a weapon? How many kids, nowadays, don’t know how to properly use a knife? My own children love to take their knife outside to whittle a stick. There are weeks when they can hardly wait to go outside on the weekend to carve a stick to be used for a “sword fight”. Using a knife is a life skill, in the woods, in the classroom, and in the house. Not knowing how to properly handle a folding blade knife will ensure a cut in the kitchen when using a fixed blade kitchen knife. One of the best ways to learn to not cut yourself with your knife, is to start young and know that it may happen, but know you will learn quickly to not let it happen again. When our oldest was in kindergarten, she was carving a bar of soap with the Girl Scout troop at our camp. She looked away for a second to focus on another carver but kept her knife moving. Surprisingly calm, she showed her dad her bleeding finger, then put away her knife and came home to get a bit of first aid. She still talks about that day. This accident, thankfully minor, quickly taught her to never look away from what she is cutting and where her blade is. Knock on wood, she hasn’t cut herself again. As a mom, I am always nervous watching my kids using their knives, but I recognize that it is an important life skill that they are perfecting.

Like father, like son.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “There was never a good knife made of bad steel.” Any person who has ever had a good knife will know that it is only as good as the metal it is made out of. If it can’t be sharpened and cleaned, it is not useful. If, as a person, we are not open to being sharpened and trained, if we don’t allow ourselves to be cleaned and shined, we will not be as good and useful a person as we could potentially be. When we settle into complacency with our life and our learning, we are not sharpening our brains and training ourselves to become better. When we do not try to improve ourselves on a daily basis, we are not becoming the best knife that we can be. While I don’t believe any person is ever made of “bad steel”, I do believe that we can strengthen and build ourselves up to be the best person and tool for God’s kingdom we can possibly be.

Hebrews 4:12 states, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” The Bible is a sharp and useful tool. With it, we can decide our heart’s attitude and separate the bad from the good within ourselves. The word of God should be as prevalent in our life as our ever-present pocket knife. We should carry it in our hearts, treasure it, and use it daily to become the sharpest and best-made person we can be. A knifeless man is a lifeless man. I believe we could also say, “a Bibleless man is a lifeless man.”