Over the last 24 hours I’ve begun to decompress. Last night I finished my final final and polished up my last exegetical paper of the semester. After the crazily intense Jan-Term Hebrew Weak Verbs course jumping into the semester this spring was a challenge and the particular way this semester’s schedule fell out only made things more difficult to hold together. Though I learned a lot, I have to say I have never been more thankful to have reached the point where I can say, “I am done.”

That’s not to say I am done entirely, of course. I have three semesters left at Covenant. And I’m not in a particularly hurry to move on. I’m just happy to be able to focus my time on other things for a few months. I am about four to five months behind on many of my projects. Sheesh.

I always feel bad complaining about N.T. Wright’s work — he’s not only prolific, he’s perhaps one of the best examples of a scholar who fits somewhere within Evangelical ranks. I like that Wright is willing to question the status quo while remaining strong on the essentials. He’s not merely someone who can sound scholarly, he’s a major mover and shaker. So, the benefits to reading his works are fairly obvious.

Yet, his scholarly level works can be tedious at times. I’m reading Jesus and the Victory of God for class right now. Some of it is actually quite engaging, and all of his work feels profound. I expect people will be reading these relatively new books still in 100 years. But, it can be slow going. For quite possibly the first time ever — or at least in a very long time — a book put me to sleep. Literally. I’m not sure how long I was asleep, but for a few minutes, I suppose, the second chapter of Wright’s work faded into dreamland.

Wright can write quite well, so I’m not sure why he can’t try to give his scholarly works a bit more of the life that the great theological writers of the past did. Barth can be hard, but he doesn’t put me to sleep. Be that as it may…

I’ll likely be writing more on Jesus and the Victory of God in the coming weeks.

Tomorrow I begin a two week intensive Hebrew term. Somehow in two weeks, students are suppose to become masters of the Hebrew weak verb. I’m not entirely sold on this idea, but it is a required part of my degree, so come tomorrow I’ll be trying to plow back through new parts of Hebrew… and thinking about Dante.

Well, my article I mentioned last night drew quite a crowd. Slashdot, Gizmodo, DSL Reports and numerous others — including the AHN newswire — picked up the story. Gizmodo more recently has mysteriously pulled the story, but Slashdot is still in full gear, and the article looks like it should easily pass 10,000 reads on OFB before morning.

My SAFARI CMS withstood the Slashdotting quite well. How exciting!

I too often come onto my blog sounding melancholic, if not downright depressed. I don’t want to convey the image that I’m just a perpetual rain cloud, I’m not. It just seems on issues such as my last post, my blog is such an inviting canvas on which to paint that I can’t resist. And, really, troubling issues are often the ones I need to dwell on in writing, for better or worse.

But, tonight I’ll share a joy I had over the last few days: I’ve translated my first little Hebrew sentences. Sure, they aren’t much more complex than “See Spot run, run Spot run,” but to just to get that beachhead feels marvelous with as intimidating as Hebrew appears. Especially since one sentence was even a little snippet from Genesis. I know the language is going to do its best to kill me in the coming months, but for the moment, I’ll bask in the joy of what is past.

Well, I have been quiet on here for weeks as I tried to survive the ever crazier scheduling of the semester, but as of Wednesday, I turned in my final project, a paper entitled “May Good Win Out in Glory: Towards a Barthian Exegesis of Genesis 22,” which served to wrap up the semester.

I’ll perhaps write more about the end of the semester soon. I do hope to return to my regular posting schedule of the past over the next few days as I decompress and catch up on everything.

This week looks really, really crazy. In part, it looks crazy because I have tons of group meetings all week for final projects. I have no less than three different group projects in motion right now! Of notable interest today is my group for Marriage and Family — we met today to film our project. We opted to do a video project, so we arranged a set and did some acting today. The project still has a way to go, but it feels good to have the video all on tape now at least.

One of the weird paradoxes of Covenant has been that it has been one of the most encouraging and discouraging experiences I’ve ever had. Encouraging in seeing the professors and students live the Gospel, encouraging in the wonderful opportunities to learn and be stretched, encouraging in the wonderful people I have met, encouraging in the common sense of mission, encouraging even in how I’ve learned I like homiletics classes!

But it is discouraging too. A lot of that is in the overwhelming workload. This semester is the first semester ever that I have fallen behind in reading for classes at the beginning of the semester. A few classes have drawn so much time that the others have had to play second fiddle. I don’t like that — it makes me uncomfortable and it makes me feel like I really cannot do my best work.

I’m hoping it will improve in the coming weeks. But tonight I feel discouraged.

Over the span of five days, starting today (Thursday), I have five papers or sermons of varying sizes due. I’ve been facing writers block of a sort again lately, so it was with much joy that tonight I was able to start writing fairly quickly again. I filled in (at least in rough form) four of the six sub points in my sermon project and even came up with one illustration.

I just hope God will keep me cruising through the pages tomorrow. If I can keep up at the same rate, I could have rough drafts of my two largest projects fairly complete tomorrow. That would given me a little wiggle room to edit and rewrite as needed.

Well, today, I checked in to Covenant for the Spring semester. I do not actually start until next Tuesday, but as of today, all of my stuff is in order, and I have all of my books, save a few special ones for an independent study. I’ve enjoyed being off, and wouldn’t necessarily complain if I had a few more weeks of downtime, but that said, it looks like an interesting and exciting semester ahead.

Here goes nothing…