THE MOMENT I DECIDED to give you a short update about where I am and what I have been doing lately, it occurred to me that I am better than God in one way.
The reason I know I am is because of something Job wrote. I’ve been paraphrasing the Bible book of Job recently for my ongoing project of paraphrasing The Casual English Bible® (TCEB).
“Why doesn’t God get a calendar…
Of all those who know him,
No one has a clue about his schedule” (Job 24:1).
Job wanted to get on God’s calendar and confront him about all the tragedies Job had suffered. Job lost his family in a windstorm and his flocks to fire and raiders. But he couldn’t find God It made him angry.
I have a calendar. It’s all marked up by me and the grandkids. And I’m going to tell you about it.
I’ve been working for the better part of a decade on paraphrasing TCEB, adding some pretty intense, 3D-style maps—more than 1,000 of them—along with footnotes and discussion questions and answers.
And this is a short accounting of where I am in the work.
The Casual English Bible® (TCEB) to-do list
- 63 CHAPTERS TO GO. The Protestant Bible I use has 66 books and 1,189 chapters. I have just one and a half books left to finish, 63 chapters. The first draft of TCEB should be done late this fall.
- EASY WEB. We have been working lately on planning to make the website easier to use and the maps easier to find and to buy.
- GOOGLE SEARCH RX. We’re working especially hard on the search engine optimization SEO of the website, which should make it easier for you to find us in Google’s search engine.
- FULL BIBLE ATLAS. I’m working with a designer who has designed my bestselling Complete Guide to the Bible to create a printed edition of a Complete Bible Atlas, drawing from our best maps in TCEB.
- MAP RIGHTS. We’ve got to update all our atlases with information about the map permissions we grant map users, based on what our intellectual rights lawyer told us.
- WATERMARKED MAPS. I personally need to reupload a few hundred maps because a developer accidentally loaded a second watermark on top of a previous watermark. That makes beautiful maps look ugly. I’d have the developer do it, but it’s less work for me to do it than to gather the maps, show them how to do it, check what they’ve done, have them redo mistakes, and check it again. They’d have a learning curve, too.
- BLOGS ON MY WATCH. I need to continue writing blogs to keep you folks up to date and engaged with TCEB, and using the work we’ve spent a decade creating for you.
- BIBLE MAP MARKETING. I’m told I need an email marketing campaign to introduce people to the Bible maps we’ve created. This has been a tough one. It’s hard to find solid, affordable help in this area. We’ve had a few false starts. Also, most people seem to want paid like a college dropout who starts a social media platform, unethically harvests personal data, sells it to China, and gets to sit beside a president on inauguration day.
- PRINTED TCEB. We had planned to release a printed edition of the New Testament this summer. But when the designer said that’s about the time she would finish the design, we dropped that in favor of a full Bible once we finish and proof the Old Testament. The New Testament is almost done with the initial proofs.
- MORE LEADER’S GUIDES. Once we finish paraphrasing Ezekiel, the next book up and the one we saved for last, we’ll begin work on the Q&A leader’s guides for the Old Testament. We have guides for each New Testament book included in the individual Bible Book atlases.
- PROOFREADING GUIDES. We still have to give a second proofing to all the leader’s guides.
- BIG-DOLLAR PROOFERS. Before we go to press with TCEB, we’ll have the manuscript proofed again by a company that specializes in proofing and editing Bibles for the translations and paraphrases written and edited by more familiar Bibles.
- WEIGHT ON SHOULDERS. There’s more, but now I’m getting a sinking feeling. It feels like Gravity.
Other projects
- TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME. I’ve been taking pictures of my grandson’s baseball team and am working on a video for the team’s coaches and players and the parents. I have a fast camera and take about 600 photos per game. That way I usually manage to get a few good photos.
- SING A SONG FOR A KID. I’ve teamed up with a UK musician to arrange the backing track for a kid’s song I had planned to release earlier. But the mix wasn’t up to industry standards, reviewers told me. This is a fun song I wrote for a bored grandson in the backseat of my 1998 Sienna minivan on the drive from his house to mine. So, I’ll try to sing it. If my painfully honest UK musician hears my vocal and says, “Gag me with a green guitar,” we’ll find someone else to sing it for posterity, which tends not to posture beyond the life of a skitter fly. This will become my second release, after “I Will Thank God, He’s My Savior,” inspired by the prophet Habakkuk’s prayer.
- BUMMER. Oh rats! I just found another batch of to-dos. I have a second website. It’s an author site about the books I’ve written. It was the original website before I started TCEB. I just discovered a bunch of broken stuff and missing videos and missing flipbooks intended to show you samples of the inside of my books. I can’t even find the flipbooks on the server. So, this jumped to the top of the to-do list for today and bumped aside Job 28, which I was going to begin paraphrasing today.
Man, these sites take a lot of time and energy and moola. And when you don’t have the revenue stream to bring in the level of help you need, you end up doing what you can and wishing you could do more. It’s tough when you can dream it but can’t figure out how to do it. But we’ll do the best we can.
- CANINE CHEMO. My wife and I are also spending a lot of time helping our 6-year-old black lab, Maizey, through chemotherapy for lymphoma, which is fatal in dogs. Lymph nodes in her throat are large enough now that we need to closely watch her for signs of choking. I spend most nights with her now, down in the basement room where I typically record my Bible videos. Today, for the first time, I’ve notice some occasional coughing that doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard from her before. When I think about what’s coming long enough to type a paragraph like this, the moment crumbles.
Right now, that last item is the most important to me and my wife. Finishing the Bible paraphrase is a big deal, but Maizey is a life entrusted to us. Knowing what’s coming makes me at least tear up every day. Some days much more so.
That’s my schedule. Job would have been pleased by its easy access.
May God help us to chose wisely about how to spend each fleeting day, and to muster the wisdom to live fully each day as it comes.
What you missed
Job’s angry words to God
I AM SHOCKED at how much “patient” Job shredded God.
I’ve written about the Bible almost all my career. But when you have to paraphrase the Bible into casual English, as I do for The Casual English Bible,® you study it like you’ve never studied it before.
The safe thing to do would be to soften his words. But I don’t.
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