Ruts in the Road

Meditation delivered during our Co-Teacher Training & Orientation Night prior to our 3rd year at Covenant Classical School.

Did you know that train tracks in the United States are 4 feet 8 ½ inches apart? In fact, 60% of the railroad tracks in the world use a gauge of 4 feet 8 ½ inches. That is considered the standard or international gauge.

Four feet 8 ½ inches is an odd number. Why did they use that number? Well, that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads. 

But why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used. 

So why did they use that gauge for the tramways? Because the people who first built the tramways used the same jigs and tools they had used for building wagons. And wagon wheels were spaced 4 feet 8 ½ inches apart.

But why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England. You see, that was the spacing of the wheel ruts on the roads. 

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions, and those roads have been used ever since. And what about the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. 

So the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet 8 ½ inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the width of two war horses.

Now, the rumor goes that Roman chariots even influenced the dimensions of the rocket boosters used to launch NASA space shuttles into orbit. This may not be accurate, but some claim that the engineers had to adjust the dimensions of the rockets in order for them to be shipped by train to the launch site.

This is an incredible reminder that we live downstream from our ancestors. The Romans and their chariots are long gone. But our lives today are shaped by their lives in very real ways. In fact, every aspect of our lives is shaped by people who went before us. At this moment, we are enjoying the fruits of the labors of others. Think about the clothing you are wearing, the vehicle you rode in to get here, the lights illuminating this room, the air conditioning keeping us cool. What people did in the past affects us right now.

The railroad gauge is also a reminder that others will live downstream from us. There will be people 100, 200, 500, 1,000 years from now. The choices we make and the way we live will wear ruts that will shape their world.

Psalm 78:1–7 says this: 

“Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth! 2 I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, 3 things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. 4 We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. 5 He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, 6 that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, 7 so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.”

This is why Covenant Classical School exists—to tell the coming generations the glorious deeds of the Lord. Not just to tell our children about his wonders, but to teach them to wonder, to introduce them to God’s works and to God’s world and to God’s Word.

We enter our third school year at Covenant Classical with great humility. We are humbled when we consider that we get to stand on the shoulders of great thinkers and great saints who have gone before us. We have access to God’s Word because our fathers in the faith told their children, who told their children, who told their children—right down to us. We are all here because we value this distinctly classical approach to education. 

In order to know where we ought to be going, we have to be familiar with where we come from. Classical education is about engaging together in “the Great Conversation” that has been going on since long, long before we arrived. Standing thousands of years downstream from great minds and great works and great events, we have a lot of catching up to do. And that is humbling and exciting.

We also enter this school year full of hope and faith. We place no confidence in ourselves. But we trust our Savior, Jesus Christ. And in Christ, we are confident that all of God’s promises to us are yes and amen. So though we cannot see the future—generations yet unborn—we know by faith that God will bless and establish the work of our hands. 

Covenant is a baby school, just entering our third year, but God has been faithful to us, and so kind. We started with 7 students, and now there are 29. So let’s labor and build together, let’s teach and learn by faith. And if the Lord wills—if God, our God, blesses us—then what happens here this year will wear ruts in the road that will shape the lives of our children for the rest of their lives. And God willing, those ruts will shape the lives of their children, and their children’s children to a thousand generations.

As Psalm 105:8 says, “He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations.”