In general I would say, leave the jewels and take the tools.  In deciding what to take, my thinking went mostly like this…”Assuming I will loose it all, there is no way I can load the big stuff and though it would be expensive to replace, it could be.  What I will need most however are the tools to rebuild, and rebuild we would.  Yes the trees would be black twigs sticking out of ashen earth.  There would be very little green if anything and there would be a lot to clean up.  But we would rebuild.  What else is there to do?

I am remembering stories of the Great Depression my parents used to tell of loosing the farm when the banks went broke.  Or the story  a rancher friend named John Sibbit tells of the blizzard of 1949.  Masses and masses of cattle (called live STOCK for financial reasons) frozen, smothered, lost or obliterated by the trains when they plowed through 
herds of cattle standing on the only dry areas…the tracks.  This was loss.  But John survived and flourished.  My dad and mom survived and they flourished.

A few years ago I made a dresser which I entitled “Took a Hit”.  It was in honor of some friends of mine who had lost their daughter in a car accident.  I can’t imagine the pain but they survived and they have thrived.  They have been made different by the “hit” they have taken, but they, like my dresser still function because they held tight to the tools to
repair the damage.

So I say leave the jewels (the stuff that is) and hold fast to the tools.  For me that’s Christ and a hammer and saw.