Burnen' Down the House

You’re familiar with the question: What’s the first thing you grab to save if your house is on fire (assuming your precious children are safe)?  Of course, every decent mother and woman in general will go for her pictures.  The digital age has made this a much easier task.  We can easily stick our hard drive and camera in our pockets. Great!  My hands are still free!  But my trouble is just beginning… I have not crossed over to the digital age of books.  Nor do I really want to.  My next article discusses that in further detail.  But as I was putting my thoughts together for that article, the horrifying fire question haunted me again.  My daily workouts will not prove as adequate training for running from a burning house while carrying Calvin’s Commentaries.  And that is only one important shelf from my library.  I must rescue Spurgeon’s two volume autobiography!  He was my companion throughout my pregnancy with my son.  Of course I have his sermons, including the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit collection handed down from my granddaddy.  And I can’t leave behind my first systematic theology books!  Grudem, Hodge, and Berkof taught me so much in my formative theological transitioning years.  And Edwards!  I slaved over reading that tiny print while trying to find a comfortable position holding a volume as big as that family-super-size-Bible (you know, the one our parents displayed on the coffee table).  Sproul helped feed me the baby food of reformed theology, while Horton refined me with the covenantal meal.  And then there’s Schaeffer’s works that were there for me when I needed to articulate my college experiences and cultural questions.  I must rescue all my friends!!  All the marks I made on those pages…the coffee stains in the paper, and the crumbs in the bindings, each with their own smell and feel—how can I digitize that? So, if anybody wants to invent one of those force-fields that I see in all my son’s superhero cartoons, I would be much obliged.  Or, maybe I could get a pair of those jet-propelled shoes he always talks about.  Although, I suppose it wouldn’t be wise to use jet-propelled shoes in a fire.  I bet Thing One and Thing Two would be real helpful for saving a bunch of books in a pinch.  They could juggle them all while running on a playground ball.   Needless to say, you Kindle and iPad owners probably have far less fire anxiety than me!