All the Books in Eldredge Public Library

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A good writer is one who recognizes that there is always more to the story than they’re capable of telling. The world is vast, and they will never come to the end of it. John wrote his gospel with this humbly in mind. He had undertaken the formidable task of writing about his Rabbi and Lord, Jesus the Christ, and he knew one book couldn’t contain all the glory.

On the final page, he added a note:

“Now there were also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” ~ John 21:25

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And yet the world has tried.

I have seen many books in my time and read a humble few. I often long to revisit the library in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where paintings hung above a fireplace framed by yawning windows, where armchairs were tucked upstairs on the balconies, where books ran along the walls.

I wrote home from Stockbridge to Papa Larry:

Papa,
Stockbridge had a wonderfully regal and airy library with tall, paned windows and a white fireplace. Dad told us to meet him at the van at 11:15, so I waited on the library’s window seat, next to a bookcase, with a Sherlock Holmes volume on my lap until the old grandfather clock clanged eleven.

Alas, 11:00 came too quickly.

A few hours away on Cape Cod in Chatham, Massachusetts was a different library. This one had dark, oak doors and a bay window set in a brick turret. I passed it up on the street at first, because construction scaffolds blocked the front of the building, and it was only a sign that told me what it was:

Eldredge Public Library

The side door was open, and I stepped into the hushed building that smelled of books.

It was two stories, with mahogany shelves and banisters. The books didn’t run in lines, but were tucked into individual nooks lit by green gooseneck lamps. An iron staircase spiraled to the upper story. The bay window on the front of the building gazed out to Main Street, and I knew that somewhere behind it lay the sea.

I found a memoir, sat on a stool in a corner, and read the first page. I could have stayed for hours, but I knew it would only be a matter of time before my family wondered where I’d disappeared to. Sometimes, I go back there in my imagination and finish that book.

The other day, Papa Larry asked me something startling:

“Did you ever think of the biography section of a library as the opposite of a graveyard—with books replacing tombstones?”

If a tombstone marks a death, then a book marks a life. In fact, it preserves and resurrects that life, so thousands of readers can live it over again.

Eldredge Public Library holds a thousand lives, and yet according to the writer John, even the oldest, fullest library cannot contain all there is to know. All the books in all the libraries cannot rightly capture all of who God is, because his glory is too real for a page, too vast for one volume. Thanks be to God that his Word is sufficient, but it is by no means exhaustive. We know what we need to know, but that doesn’t mean we will ever know it all. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, as the waters cover the sea, and as the books brim to the top of the tallest library.

A good writer recognizes this, and a good writer tries his best anyway.

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