I am on an adventure vacation trip and pre-writing these devotions.

I enjoyed perusing and photographing this stockpile of newspapers from my family’s old farmhouse – just enough papers have been saved to make it manageable – of interesting things – especially war and weather.​ They are preserved so well and really really meaty reads.​

For war, it is WW2 – both papers local to their city and those sent from other cities – including from Honolulu from my uncle who was deployed there before the South Pacific. Many papers with the big headlines were saved but we did recycle crumbled papers that were not saved to be saved but just “stuff” in stuffing. (you can’t keep everything) And yes – all these papers were BIG and Wide and detailed and interesting.

I could tell that my family and surely all the newspaper readers of the time paid attention to the progress of the war’s front lines. Troop progress maps were published in these papers – history and geography was studied. And surely the readers (including my family) were concerned both for their family members at the front lines as well as folks back in the old country – it is hard to ignore the importance of the times when you have many connections. It must also have been so tough to participate in the war machine when family may have been inadvertently in the way. 

(My Grandfather was a farmer and older and not in WW2 but maintaining the home front – and growing crops – but still part of the mix of the American people paying attention, sacrificing, and producing.)

And then I found that there is an interesting stockpile of clippings that my family kept from the Lindbergh baby kidnapping – and the trial of the alleged perpetrator – it was truly the most captivating scandal and sorrow of that time – and in a time when people had newspapers and radio – not TV nor social media on demand – they hung on every word in the records.

Weather-related news making headlines was also saved – hurricanes and 100-year floods that come much more often these days… And these papers also had society sections and puzzles and comics and ads – especially ads that showed the fashions of the day. Side by side with the hard news. Interesting that we seem to have minds that can flip flop like that too – from serious to silly. And oh – those sport pages – surely those were read intensely and the stock pages too. ​

All the news that’s fit to print made for a jam-packed newspaper. I found them filled with patriotic encouragement too! Like women being recruited into the Navy.

And then I bet that people, after they read the papers, had discussions of the news, surely. People would certainly have taken the opportunity to take it all in personally while reading – then mulling it over later – and then discussing it. Especially if someone was reading a paper over one’s shoulder there must have been immediate conversation. The news and the newspapers – they were  also a route for teaching – that the parents could explain what was going on without reading the paper verbatim – then again that was a great teaching tool for vocabulary and sentance structure – and also condensed news. The newspaper was a big deal in the day…

We can re-read these papers now – or read fresh for news that we didn’t realize we didn’t know. They have a depth of history – and yet refer to so short a time frame for what these newspapers and our lives span – so short compared to forever – and time changes so fast for us.

So – what news is UNCHANGING? Ah – the GOOD NEWS… Ah, yes all the news that gets INTO print and is FROM print – as Jesus IS the Word. All the news that’s fit to print – and fit fittingly healthy and good. And unchanging – Jesus Himself says don’t add or subtract (see Revelation 22:18-19) to the Word or the prophecies – don’t be misled by the message either. Take in the truth and let the truth work in you…

If people are obsessed and save Headlines that are BIG and BOLD – how much more we can save the Word in us as truth and not splashy but salvation-y… And isn’t it grand that the news that comes and goes about wars – as bad as it is – will all fade when Jesus returns and all knees will bow to Him. Now there will not be a newspaper headline for that day – but a head-line in sight of the real news – the GOOD NEWS – forever…

Amen…

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