Friday, August 17, 2007

The horror! The humanity!!!!

How can an all-loving, all-good, all-powerful God exist if.........I accidentally left my bookbag in the back of my truck during a rain storm?!?! I'm in tears! Sheer agony!

A Psalm of Lament

O Lord, deliver me!
I am surrounded by wet books. My pain is overwhelming.
Books dear to my heart I have lost to the torrent.
My heart cries out for you to deliver them under the fans and ovens and hair dryers.
Keep safe their little pages, allow none to tear.
Reshape my books, O Lord, and I will praise you all of my days.
For you are Holy and a book lover, no doubt.
Praise YHWH for His blessing upon my dry books.


******Update as of 2am 8/18/07*********
I've set up my kitchen table as a book drying center. I have two fans blowing on the books and the books themselves are stood up. Occassionally, I run the hair dryer over them. I think I'm making progress. The books that were in my bookbag were:

My NASB (my main Bible with all my notes in it) - in the book ICU, it may pull through, although it will never be the same. My notes are all smudged now. YEARS of brilliance down the drain!
My Greek NT (UBS 4th Edition) - Critical Condition, but we may be able to bring it back.
My little notebook. This thing is a small, leatherbound notebook that I keep all of my ideas, notes from conferences, etc, in. The pages are stained badly, but I think I can salvage it.
E.P. Sanders "The Historical Figure of Jesus" - Lost, completely. This thing got soaked completely on every page.
Scott Hahn "The Lamb's Supper" - Didn't take too bad of a hit and is in serious condition.
________ "Kinship by Covenant..." (Dissertation) The cover came off, but I think I'll be able to salvage it. I may buy another copy.
Mike Aquilina "The Fathers of the Church" - Critical condition, but I think it'll make it.

4 comments:

Chris Tilling said...

"E.P. Sanders "The Historical Figure of Jesus" - Lost, completely."

Judgment.

Brandon said...

I hope you're talking about the Penguin paperback, which is relatively cheap. But then again, aren't Penguins compatible with water?

Josh McManaway said...

I wrote a Psalm of Lament! This is no time for jokes!!!


I'm kidding. Apparently this penguin had some birth defects and just soaked up all the water like a sponge.

Esteban Vázquez said...

How fantastic! This is exactly the sort of thing I would write about my books given a similar situation. And trust me, I know the pain: I was gone for three months in 2005, and came back to find that a leak had developed that utterly ruined three volumes of Barth's Church Dogmatics (which average $90 a pop!), two volumes of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, and the three volumes of the Creeds of Christendom. My eyes well up with tears even now, and it's been almost two years!

Be strong. :-)