God Recycles Too!
God Recycles Too!
By Chloe JonPaul M.Ed.
As I fill containers with paper, cardboard, foam, plastic, glass, and metal scraps, I marvel at the thought that I can, in a small but important way, be helping to save our endangered environment.
The hairs on my head stand up like Brillo when I see people throwing trash on the ground – right next to a waste bin located on the sidewalk. Then we have the careless fools who throw stuff out their car window as they whiz past.
With a little effort but lots of determination, I have set up things in my household so that I can efficiently and routinely recycle everything that can be recycled.
Our city’s waste management division has made it even simpler by providing residents with big plastic bins to store most items. I keep a large plastic trash bag to store plastic shopping bags and other plastic wrap and bring it to a near-by supermarket for disposal.
Our city doesn’t have a center for re-cycling foam so I store foam containers and packaging foam until I have enough to bring to a neighboring town that happens to be on the route I take for other errands.
One day, as I was busy sorting out stuff to be recycled, this thought came to me: God recycles too! He salvages our miserable souls and transforms them into His own image and likeness.
When I read stories about the lives of men and women who exemplify this, it simply punctuates this thought.
- Consider St. Paul who persecuted the early Church
- St. Peter who denied Christ three times
- St. Mary Magdalene, a well-known notorious sinner
- In our own times, Dorothy Day. She lived a bohemian life that included a common-law marriage as well as an abortion
- And how about John Newton who wrote the beautiful hymn “Amazing Grace”?
There are so many more accounts that would take pages to relate, but I know from my own personal experience that He does indeed recycle!
With a gentle whisper asking me to take His Hand, He led me from a lifestyle that was bound to be destined for eternal damnation and like the Good Shepherd that He is, led me back to His fold.
I know that atheists and skeptics who read this will snicker and scoff but that doesn’t matter to me. The definition of recycling is that it is the process of re-using a given product or producing a new product from recyclable material.
And that is what the Almighty has done with me and countless others. Yes! God recycles too!
In addition to being a longtime member of the NABBW, a hospice and homeless shelter volunteer, world traveler and an advisory board member for the Maryland Dept. of Aging\’s Healthcare Commission and their Interagency Commission for Aging Services, Chloe Jon Paul, M.Ed., is a retired educator -turned-writer with four published books to her credit. Her first book, What Happens Next? A Family Guide to Nursing Home Visits… and More, was originally published in paperback, and is now available on Kindle. Subsequent books include Entering the Age of Elegance, a travel guide for Baby Boomer women, complete with curiosity-evoking subtitles as Change Your Oil Filter, The FGA Quotient, The F-Word You Need to Use, The 10 Commandments of Aging Motherhood, and Just Heard It through the Grapevine. Recently she\’s turned out a novel, This Business of Children, and a children\’s book, The Girl Who did Not Like Her Name. Chloe is also a co-author with David Mezzapelle in his latest book, Contagious Optimism, and featured in Don McAuley’s book, 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading.
