Repurposing

January 22, 2019

There’s not much in our newspaper these days. With 24 hour news available on tv and online, people aren’t reading the paper the way they used to. The want ads that used to fill page after page of small print have all but succumbed to eBay and Craigslist, and aside from local events, obituaries, and high school sports, there’s not much left to read.

My grandfather was a Linotype operator for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, one of two dailies for the city, the other being the Times Union. Before the advent of computers or even aluminum print sheets, the Linotype was a huge, noisy machine into which molten lead was poured. The operator would type on the keyboard which operated mechanisms allowing the molten lead to flow into molds called slugs, each slug containing a line of one to perhaps half dozen words which were shuttled to the print press. It was dirty, noisy work, and many was the morning he would come home with burns where the lead had splattered on his arms or hands.

Back then, the papers were not only thick, but large. I remember him teaching me how to make a printer’s hat out of a sheet of newsprint. With today’s papers, that same hat would barely fit on a doll’s head. 

So, like so many items of a certain vintage, repurposing seems to be the way to go. We do it with old furniture, kitchenware, even tools. Why not with newspaper? This evening after dinner, it was time to repurpose a few old newspapers, along with the remnants of candles burned to the short end of their wicks. Separated into pages, rolled, tied off, and dipped into an old baking pan filled with the melted bits of candles, and I have a stack of firestarters that will last nearly till springtime.

Jesus is in the repurposing business, too. He takes people who were used up, broken, and ready to be thrown out, covers them with molten love, and makes something brand new, ready to catch the flame of his Holy Spirit to set ablaze a whole new fire that can warm any who will come close. I am thankful tonight that he repurposed me, and continues to do so for countless people who once thought themselves good for nothing more than the scrapheap of life, only to find that there is a new and eternal purpose waiting for them at the foot of the Cross.