John Piper has been on writing leave for about five weeks and has three more. Here's a 4-question interview on how it's going.

What have you finished so far?

I have completed a manuscript titled Seek It Like Silver: The Place of Thinking in the Pursuit of God. It’s the same length as Finally Alive.

To explain the title, here’s the last paragraph of the introduction:

If you...raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver...then you will...find the knowledge of God” (Proverbs 2:3-6). I need all the help I can get to love the knowledge of God more than the profits of silver. I assume you do too. So I wrote this to remind myself of the place of thinking in the pursuit of God. As a little echo of Calvin and Augustine, I say with them, “I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write.” If you join me, I hope you find it helpful.

I put the finishing touches on the fifth book of The Swans Are Not Silent series, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing Christ to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton.

I tweaked the endings of the four narrative poems on Ruth with a view to producing a new artistic book on Ruth like the big Job book. This will go with a new book on Ruth that will be out in about a year titled, A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and Sovereignty in the Book of Ruth.

What are you working on now?

A book on how the pursuit of racial and ethnic diversity and harmony relate to the gospel. No title yet.

What do you hope to accomplish during the rest of your time?

If I could finish the book on ethnic diversity I would be happy. But I would love to get at least a little start on a larger book on the sovereignty of God that would take several years to do.

How can people pray for you?

That I see the truth clearly, feel it dearly, and tell it with compelling power. That I not spin my wheels or waste time. That I not neglect prayer and a moment-by-moment sense of dependence on God’s grace. That I love Noël and Talitha the way I should. That the church flourish in my absence. That God’s name be hallowed and Christ be exalted in all of this.