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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A Digital History

There are times when one wonders, without worrying about proper grammar evidently, “just what I have I gotten myself into"? I can relate to that question these days. I decided several months ago that I would finally get around to a retirement task that I had been moving forward in my todo list for several years. I have purposed in my heart to digitize, collate and file every last photograph, slide, negative and image already on old fashioned floppy disc in our possession. I enthusiastically set up a large table in the downstairs pantry and started collecting all of our photographs taken over forty-two years from all over the house and combined them in very poorly sorted piles of inherited photographs from Lozanne’s and my parents. I had no idea that the pile would be so imposing. I also had no idea that others would rifle through the piles with great interest and make my poor sort even poorer. Undaunted, I purchased a scanner capable of transcribing every photographic media into digital pictures. I spent a whole day devising a comprehensive filing system in which to collect the pictures. A foolproof backup system was also put into place. I quickly discovered that there simply was no way to pre-sort the negatives and the slides. Filing decisions are now necessary as I am scanning random material. No matter what I do to streamline the process, which includes exhaustive editing, the best I can manage is twenty photographs in a two hour work period. I sometimes wonder if the good Lord will allow me the time on this earth to complete this project of projects. I now regard the bulging family photo albums from as far back as the forties with some trepidation.

I started and completed the job of filing the photos on floppy three and a half inch disc. This collection was fairly recent and consisted mostly of our older grandchildren. I am now working on the hundreds of slides taken in the seventies and eighties. The job has become a labour of love. I never quite know who will show up on my scanner preview screen. I am transported back to a time when our now very adult children, most of whom are admittedly middle aged (sorry kids), were infants and young children. It is like I have never seen these photographs before. The job has turned from a formidable task into a great pleasure. There on the screen are special occasions like Christmas, birthdays and baptisms not to mention the Florida and British Columbia road trips taken in the early eighties. I am taken back in time when Lozanne and I were so young, energized and so much enjoying our young family. And yes, I have shed a few private tears in the solitude of my downstairs study.

The one question that has haunted me of late is where have all those years gone? How could time pass so very quickly? I am drawn to one verse in the Bible that best characterizes our human condition when it comes to time. We count our lives in days that quickly turn into years, and then decades. It all slips by so very quickly and then we are whisked into eternity. This timetable is a very human condition. Such is not the case for our caring and all powerful God. Moses phrases this reality so very well in Psalm 90: 4.

4 For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it is past, And like a watch in the night.

What a short life we have on this side of eternity. What a long life we have on the other side of the door. Are you certain where you will spend your thousands of years? The very good news is that you can be absolutely certain with belief in Jesus Christ.

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1 comment:

  1. Ahh but a whisp of vapor. James would remind us that our lives are very brief indeed(4:14). Well at least our pilgrim lives. I was looking at an empty frame for placing a collage of photos that we were hoping to hang at the cottage now that the renovations are done and it is time to turn it into a home away from home. As I look at photographs, I am sometimes saddened, not so much by my advancing age, but more in the loss opportunities to serve my Lord. But I must be encouraged that each new day brings with it the promise of new opportunities to serve and so onward and upward.

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