Baa if you like a bit of Moo but not in a library

We are all embroiled in essay writing before we leave and the holidays are not holidays but hours in front of laptops searching through Ebsco and JSTOR because many of the library commentaries have already gone for those of us a bit slow off the mark.

Everything can get rather out of proportion as you ponder the fact that there are perhaps a dozen possible theories for whom the 'I' might be in Romans 7, which is what I am negotiating at the moment. It is good to take five and look about you, get out into the world and discover that really very few people on this planet are going spare over one small Greek word and perhaps in the long run, you will look back and wonder about all the hours you spent exegeting. Who knows? It is preparation for the Christian life and for those sermons we will be preaching but some of it is also just a small contribution to the world of academia. Having said that, even if the very specifics remain shelved in the brain until they flesh out into something and you sense that connection or are able to bring that thinking to an embodied situation, we are gathering tools along the way for how to apply theological thinking, so long as we are also able to take those rarified arguments and translate them into something that can be communicated and heard.

Sometimes it is a bit of a puzzle to me how it is all going to translate. I just have to trust it will. In the meantime, I did discover that the lovely Dr Moo has a very nice site, even if frustratingly his google book Romans NICNT denies me access just at the place I most need it. You know I welcome the day when at some point all these books come winging their way down my fibre-optics but then hearing about HMV today and Waterstones, I also wonder what will become of out depositories for books and music and indeed what will become of the very libraries that I seem to be visiting less and less often these days, even though ironically I am in need of more and more books.