I love to have a beer with Calvin

It seems every spare moment I have of late is taken by reading Calvin's Institutes or trying to finish a bunch of translations. I've got one more week. The holidays are almost gone, and it's that last minute rush of trying to finish off all my vacation assignments before registration at college. I still feel 'vacation assignment' is an oxymoron, but I guess I'm really the moron for not being more on top of my work over the break. Thankfully I haven't been too slack, just 25 pages a day for the next week will have me finished my Calvin, I've got 2 Greek, and 3 Hebrew translations to do in that time. I'm also getting a book review from the blog published in The Briefing, but seeing as I hadn't read the book for a year I'm trying to read that again as well to make sure I still agree with what I said.

Lately I've been blogging in my head, but haven't had time to get it down on screen. Do you ever have this feeling? You see something, think something, notice something, and you start formulating your thoughts in the form of a blogpost, except that you're nowhere near a computer. Well usually I then get to a computer in the near future and get it down, but not over the past few months.

But I have been blogging in my head. For example the other morning I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep. So, like always seems to happen in those moments, my mind began to stroll. Lying there awake I wrote an introduction to my next sermon, a couple of lines to a song (which I then got out of bed and wrote and will hopefully reveal later this week), and I also managed to make a comparison between my preaching and jerky.

My brother in law is right into beef jerky at the moment. Apparently the protein is good if you're trying to bulk up. I'm not, but I tried some anyway. The best thing I can say about jerky is that it gave me an analogy for my preaching of late (No, not that I've been a jerk for those who were thinking it). Rather, I've been attempting to feed people who are ready, no longer milk but solid food (read: meat). But I've been giving them jerky. The essence of solid food is definitely still there, but it's well and truly overcooked. Nourishing, yet difficult to digest. Slightly bitter to the taste.

As for the beer with Calvin thingy, I was waiting in my car in a car park the other day because I was an hour early for a bucks night dinner. So I was sitting there in the car park, reading Calvin and then, just because, I opened a beer and drank it whilst reading Calvin. I've never drunk a beer on my own before, and I don't plan on making it regular. I would only probably have on average one beer a month and generally only at someone else's invitation. But it was quite refreshing in the hot afternoon, to sit down and have a beer with Calvin. Plus, there was a sense where going out of 'study mode' and into 'rest mode' made my thinking on what I was reading even clearer. It must be like my mates in high school used to tell me their snooker playing got better after two beers. Not that I'm advocating a beer or two before study each day at college, I'm just saying that I'm still happy to sign off that I've 'carefully read' all of my Calvin readings, even though 20 pages were read with the Institutes in one hand and a Corona in the other.

I love to have a beer with Calvin

I love to have a beer with John

Extended explanation

He sometime rants about icons

It's all about God's graces

Not about our work that saves

I love to have a beer with Calvin

Shows I am depraved.