This Is The Work That Never Ends

Remember "Lamb Chop's Play Along"? Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse and of course Boney? – "I'm Boney! I'm Boney! Leave me alone-y!" Ah yes, I can identify with Boney sometimes. Anyway, remember the other song that was introduced in that show?  It's probably the only other song in history to be more annoying than "I love you" sung by that big purple dinosaur. I hate to start it because it itself tells the unfortunate story of some people who started singing it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue singing it forever just because it is the song that never ends… Woah that was close!

 

Anyway, that song crept into my head the other day as I was thinking about our lives and the work that God has given to us to be a part of these days. For this last month, two of the translators have been away at school, and our summer intern was able to work with the remaining translator mostly by himself, thus giving me amazing freedom to catch up on other things – things that I had wanted to finish during out time in the US last year. I studied through a PhD dissertation on the Gmz language, I revised an orthography/spelling paper that I had written two years ago (explaining and justifying why we spell in Gmz the ways that we do), and I have been getting ahead on my exegetical checking of the drafted Scripture. In fact, yesterday afternoon, I hit a major milestone in the completion of my exegetical check of Luke. That means that I have studied through every word in the Greek, English and Gmz texts, consulted various exegetical and translation helps, and written a whole mess of questions and comments on the 1151 verses Luke passed down to us. The celebration of finishing the Luke check on a Friday afternoon was wonderful, but now as I look ahead to Monday, my work inbox is far from empty. Instead it is weighted down with all 1007 verses of Acts, the sequel to Luke's first novel, not to mention my desire to refresh on some Greek grammar details, read through a discourse grammar of NT Greek, study a couple still unclear things in Gmz grammar, write up a "scripture readiness" assessment of the Gmz society and on and on.

 

Although not in an eternal sense, it truly does feel like the work that never ends. "This young lad started doing it, not knowing what it was, and he'll continue doing it forever just because it is the work that never ends…" No, Miss Lamb Chop, that's not correct in my case. True, I started doing it, not really knowing what it was (as with most jobs). And I'll continue doing it "forever" just because…it is an amazing privilege to see God at work in the translation of his Word, ever shaping the language, the people, and ME along the way!