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Recently I shared with my youth Sunday School class how technology and the way we now live, has changed significantly over the past fifty years. That led to a discussion that spanned an even greater length of time in the past.

I explained how my life of a young teen greatly differed from my students. With a look of amazement, a conversation grew into an idea. And it all started when I said, “after coming home from school, one of my chores was to take the clothes off the clothesline and fold them neatly and put them away.”

Rev. Leesa, what is a clothesline?” a wide-eyed student asked. I took markers and drew an illustration of a clothesline that spanned a stretch between two trees on opposite ends of a yard. “That’s how the clothesline looked in my backyard,” I said. “Then,” I continued, “you hung the clothes on it with clothes pins.” That spawned another quizzical look and question from a student. “What are clothes pins?” I drew a picture of clothes pins and showed how they were attached to the clothes to hang them on the line.

I talked then about how some people used heavy cast iron pots, called cauldrons, to wash clothes over a wood fire in their yards. Then, I explained how they used heavy cast irons that had to be heated on a large black cast iron stove. The stoves were heated with wood or coal. The hot irons were then used to iron the freshly washed and sun-dried clothing. I tried to describe what the stove looked like, but when my description only added to my student’s confusion, we turned to the only help I knew would solve the mystery, Google.

With one look at the images of that stove, my student was fascinated to learn more. That was the origin of the ‘We Have Come This Far By Faith Museum.’ The conversations turned to how difficult and labor-intensive chores like cooking a meal was. Some people had to cut wood into pieces from dried tree limbs to use as fuel for fire. The wood was put in the large cast iron stoves to prepare a meal. A kettle or heavy cast iron pot on the same stove provided hot water for dish washing, making tea or for cooking or bath water.

School lessons were often done by a kerosene lamp that dimly lit a room. While the home I grew up in had modern conveniences, my grandmother still cherished her kerosene lamps. She hated the gas stove we had and wanted nothing to do with it.

I explained to my student, we truly have come this far by faith. Our ancestors had to trust God for having a meal on the table, and the strength to provide the meal, because of the labor-intensive measures it took to prepare it. (Even as to how the chicken that was walking around the back yard in the morning, was on the dinner table that evening.)

Thus began the We Have Come This Far By Faith Museum. The congregation was asked to bring in the oldest artifacts they had in their homes and the results were truly inspiring, educational exhibits. The museum proved to be so popular we plan to do it again. This picture is a part of my collection which includes a cast iron iron, a kerosene lamp and a 108-year-old textbook.