A hundred years of freezing and thawing finally brought a rusted horseshoe to the surface near the street in front of our church building. The tiny chapel was built in 1834, when horses, not cars, trucks, and busses, carried people along Baltimore Pike.
The shoe is small, not suited to a draft horse, but more like a buggy horse or trotter. It’s a thrown shoe that came off during travel, since two of its rusty nails still cling to their slotted grooves. And it is bent, likely because the horse had struck a large stone in the road.
The horse must have been carrying its passenger south, since the church property is on the west side of the old toll road. It’s not likely it could have migrated by itself from the east side.
But it is possible that the horse was either far from home or ridden by someone careless enough not to notice that his horse had a strange gait caused from a loose shoe or even a bruised hoof.
So even after a hundred or more years, there are still traces of the rider. What kind of person was he, or she? Where from? What was the reason for this trip? Was he headed to Baltimore or a farm in Maryland? Why the hurry or the inattention to the horse? Was there no farrier near to heat, straighten, and replace the shoe?
As tantalizing as these questions might be, we will never find their answers. They are lost to us, as lost to us as most of the details of our lives will be to those who come after us. They may discover our jewelry, notes, canceled checks, books, clothes or even the wheel cover launched from our car when we hit a pothole as we traveled south on Baltimore Pike. Even those won’t reveal who we were.
But nothing is lost because God sees and stores it all. He remembers every good deed (Matthew 25:34-40), marks every labor of love (Hebrews 6:10), and bottles our tears for safe-keeping (Psalm 56:8).
So do good and serve others as you are able, and never worry about who knows the real you. The God who clothes the grass of the field and marks the resting place of fallen sparrows is keeping track of everything, even the hairs falling from your graying, forgetful head. Matthew 6:25-34
“He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord,
and He will reward him for what he has done.”
Proverbs 19:17