Now Or Later

This blog is dedicated to Max Price, Leroy and Tommy Callison, and Maurice (plus any various crackheads and many temps from Recycled Fibers of Ohio).

Let me start with the previous mentioned parties (as you may not even remember me). Believe it or not, working with you guys left a lasting impression. (a good impression) Max, with your first day temp ticket in your briefcase and saying,"I wish I owned this place so I could drag you out in the street and beat you into a pulp and not have to fire myself!" You taught me how to work hard but work steady; to keep an eye out around me for others, which was a very fundamental lesson that somehow I escaped learning even though I grew up in the church. To 'safely' operate a tow motor in very dangerous conditions...

Leroy, you taught me a lot. Thanks for putting ends on the extension cord that I found in the trash pile. Thanks for keeping an eye on me and helping out with lots of stuff. You'd better be nice to Tommy because he's the best thing you ever produced!

Tommy, if you've not gotten out of this crazy place, or if you're actually telling the truth, and you ARE impervious to pornography, you may be the only man on the planet that is. If that is so, blessings! Stay! Tear men away from the PC mag pile unless they're looking for Bibles! Dude, you sowed into my life so much. Praise God for you. Keep looking after your family. If you haven't been walking with God, He's still there and you're not a whore (and even if you are, He loves you, too). Thanks, bro.

Maurice, MAINTAINING AND SUSTAINING WITH NO COMPLAININ'! Thanks for the line, you big whiner, and I'm far enough away from you now that you can't kick my butt. You're a really good foreman...one of the best I've ever had.

For the rest of you who have read this far, and are still reading, thank you! Allow me to explain: I worked for about a year at a paper recycling plant in Moraine, Ohio (Dayton area). So for any of you think I'm not 'go green'...phooey. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. The only reason I left the job is because I was trying to stay faithful to my wife to keep a promise I made to her and to obey the Lord. God led me out of there with my stinkin' perverse mind and my $8 per hour to a company who paid better, had better benefits, better working environment, and it was good foundational training for work I would do later. I'm now making $16 per hour with the best benefits available in America. I work for a man who loves the Lord more than anything. That in itself is testimony to where God has led me. Praise His holy name!

So, back to RFO (recycled fibers of ohio)...

We recycled cardboard, and all kinds of paper. Most of it was pretty harmless (except for the dead dogs and unexplainable garbage). There was one pit in particular that tended to get a lot of people in trouble. The PC mag pit. If I remember correctly, that's 'post consumer magazines'. The pen is truly mightier than the sword, and pictures are even stronger. So, given the type of paper, this pit contained primarily old bibles that didn't make the final publishing, and hard pornography.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 says,"This day, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life that you and your children may live. And you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life, and He will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

Never in my life and never again have I seen such a dramatic example of blessings and curses in the same place. It was a very dark time in my life and my life was shot. I remember trying to be a good little baptist, singing praises to my God at sunrise. When the sun comes up, even over Moraine, it's beautiful. I remember singing in my tow motor "Holy, Holy, Holy". One of my problems at that time was that I was hip deep in pornography. I somehow managed to keep it hidden from my wife for about four months. That was the worst four months of my life. I finally got the guts (or she extracted it) to tell her the truth.

Let me take this moment to tell you the truth: You are naked before God. He sees everything you do, everything you think, and everything you watch, and everything you say. You will remember your life here for all of eternity, either in heaven or hell. Jesus is coming soon(He said 'soon' 2000 years ago and a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day to him). So let me say this first to me, and then to anybody who's listening...REPENT! FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND! Wash your hands you sinners, and cleanse your hearts, you double minded. The judge of all the earth is standing at the door and you will have to give an account for everything you do in your life. That is the truth. Jesus Christ is Lord. He loves you, no matter how messed up you are. I'm sure you've heard the gospel a million times in America (we're just not very good at living it out). Thank you if you've read this far.

So, I made one promise to my wife that I actually kept. I told her if I kept falling into pornography I would quit my job. So I did. And God led me to much better places. I learned something there by what we produced. You take bulk paper, either in book form or magazine form, and you break it down into loose paper and feed it into a conveyor which feeds into a baler machine. So, then you ship bales of paper to the various paper mills where it is broken down to the core elements of the paper and then recycled. I wouldn't want any of you to actually see this, because it's rather disturbing, to see the precious word of God ignored and treated like trash right along side the nastiest filthiest porn that's available in the world.

God started speaking to me clearly about this time in my life. When I heard him speak, I tried to obey. He blessed me every step of the way. If you don't want to do the big study, I'll make it simple: trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. The whole law of God and the prophets is to love God with everything you have and to love your neighbor as yourself. Pornography, in particular, loves no one. It treats human beings (men and women) as if they were animals. Pieces of meat for sale to feed a ravenous, disgusting, pack of dogs that are never satisfied. I'll tell you one thing I learned: if you care about your livestock (I'm a farmer), put down the wolf. If you care about your family, put down the filth. If you care about your soul, and your eternal standing with God, you need to picture the end of your life as that bale of paper, because whatever you produce in life is going to be put before God for His inspection.

"Only one life, and soon it will be past. Only what you've done for the Lord will last." -Christafari