on papers, pipe-smoking, and the price of sparrows these days

I suppose I haven't written much in the way of updating y'all on what I've been up to lately. Part of the reason for that is that there is just so little going on in my life that wouldn't bore most folks to tears. So instead I have usually opted for posting on far more engrossing subjects like Jonathan Edwards' view of the will, Goldbach's conjecture, the Jeremiah scrolls from Qumran and the like. Hasn't it been thrilling? But, just to try to balance things out a little bit, here's a little update on what I'm up to.

It's paper season here at Westminster and so for the past few weeks I've been ransacking mine and the school's libraries for information relevant to my paper topics. I'm writing two exegesis papers: one on Jesus weeping over Jerusalem in Luke 19 and one on the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 33 (a passage I preached this past summer). I'm also writing a church history paper for which I haven't quite settled on a subject. It'll almost certainly have something to do with evangelical, Reformed and/or Fundamentalist biblical scholarship in America in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Is everybody asleep yet?

On top of research for my essays, I'm having to do a lot of translating and reading and I'm helping out with the youth group at church. So things are a little hectic.

In youth group we've been reading through Don Miller's book, Blue Like Jazz. Well, correction: I've been reading through Don Miller's book, Blue Like Jazz. The high school guys that I'm discipling are just like I was at their age and so, since there are no Cliff's Notes for the book, none of them have really read it. But no worries. It's still a good time to hang out with them, if a little unstructured, and I'm really enjoying the book even if nobody else in my group is.

To help soothe my mind in this most chaotic of seasons, I've taken up pipe smoking. Pipe smoking has a certain ritualism to it. You have to pack the pipe just so and then light it just so. Every now and again you have to move the tobacco to the middle of the bowl with your tamper and sometimes you have to relight it. It's a bit like fiddling with a campfire on a backpacking trip, except on a much smaller scale...and it smells better...and I'm not in the woods somewhere...and I've showered recently. Ok, so it's not like that at all. But anyways, the smell is great! The aroma of the tobacco simultaneously restores and stimulates the mind haggard from being overworked. Even if the intellectual caliber of our conversations doesn't actually improve while we smoke, it sure feels like it does. The pipe goes well with Scotch, but a pitcher of lager and some good friends are probably the best complement for the pipe.

With paper and translation deadlines coming up and finals just on the horizon, I'm trying not to worry much. I just try to keep reminding myself that the going rate for sparrows is two for a penny and yet not one of them falls to the ground without my Father's say so. And I'm worth a lot more than a sparrow...

aren't I?