Box Stove
After a while things deteriorate. If it wasn't for people, our goods and
possessions wear away, rust and succumb to the elements. Without use
things fall apart faster from the elements. It's all temporary and
humankind makes a difference, by building, maintaining and using.
I'm thinking of a wood stove in a small church basement room. The room is
used for meetings, prayer and Sunday school. Every day the room is used,
in winter, someone builds a fire in the stove to heat the room. People
warm their hands or huddle around on really cold days.
The stove is made out of sheet metal. It is a box stove, rectangular
shaped, twenty inches long and half that on each side. It stands on long
slender legs, bolted to the floor through tile placed when the stove was
first installed.
There is an elderly gentleman who makes the stoves. Sheet metal stoves
rust and wear out after a few years and the gentleman always makes a new
one when the old one starts to show wear. He replaces the stove and
inspects and patches the stove pipe that goes out through the wall through
a sheet metal baffle the man also built.
When he replaces it, the new stove is just like the old one, except maybe
a latch or door mechanism is a little different, but it's the same size
and always fits in the same place as the old one. The man who makes the
stove does other things for the church but is fulfilled when he makes the
stove and it provides heat to his fellow members of the church community.
I just wonder sometimes, how long things would last if people weren't
around to maintain or use them. It's an important purpose for people, that
may transcend routine and other menial responsibilties.
