Use What Is Already in Place

pixabay.com/Pixel 2013

Barbed wire was invented shortly after the Civil War. Though first resisted by open range cattlemen, it eventually came to be widely used.

I recently read an article concerning large cattle ranches in Texas, California, Montana, and Kansas in the late 1800s and early 1900s using their barbed wire fences for a new technology, telephones. The telephone was invented 1876.

The XIT ranch (1885 -1912) in the Texas Panhandle covered more than 4500 square miles with three million acres enclosed by barbed wire fencing. You can imagine the communication problems cowboys on horseback faced trying to manage such a vast cattle operation.  In the early 1900s a great many telephones were placed on the ranch to help solve this problem.

Where possible the top line of barbed wire on the fences was used as a telephone line. Though the service was ‘atrocious’ it did allow for quick communication concerning emergencies such as grass fires that required immediate help.

The cowboys, always an inventive lot, improved the call quality by using the broken necks of whiskey bottles and soda pop bottles to lift the wire off the fencepost to improve conductivity. This made the signal go further and clarified the voices they carried. 

Historian Don Anderson, who earned a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University, said that barbed wire phone systems led to the conclusion that “using whatever is already in place is smart planning”.

When rural Texas wanted to extend phone service from town to town, the engineers came up with the idea that they could use the existing rural power lines, already installed by the Rural Electrification Act and run the phone signal right through the electric lines – just at a different frequency. That saved a lot of money and brought phone service along with electricity to rural areas.

The philosophy espoused by Mr. Anderson also applies to spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ.

God wants to use ‘whatever is already in place’ in your community and state. You and I, the Christ followers, are the ‘asset’ that is already in place. We do not have to reinvent the wheel so to speak, i.e., bring in some professional person.

The hope giving message of salvation can flow through us along with all the other daily living activities that flow through us.

When we let the Holy Spirit send His power and desire through us, just like the phone current went through the barbed wire fence, it is a joyous privilege to use our hands to give someone a Gospel tract, our mouth to speak edifying words to a person who needs an encouraging word, to send our money to missionary organizations spreading the Gospel in hostile places around the world, use our money to purchase Bibles for the underground church where it is estimated each Bible brings 2-3 new believers into the church, our feet to go help hurting people who need to see the love of Jesus in action plus hear the saving message, use our resources to help the poor in our community, or do one of a million other task to tell and show people that,

‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only beloved Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16)

May you and I be the ‘barbed wire’ for God’s love and power to flow through to reach our neighbors and fellow human beings!

May it be so,

Carl

Sources: Texas Standard article: Atrocious but efficient: How ranchers used barbed wire to make phone calls and Texas Coop Power Magazine (January 2022 issue)