So I come to work much earlier than I need to, mainly to miss the traffic. I leave the house about 06:20 and pull into the parking lot about 06:45. I make coffee, put my lunch in the fridge, have a brief devotional and prayer time, get my first cup of coffee, then begin work. Not office work, but writing work. Before 08:00 I’m on my own time, not office time. Of course, if anyone needs me for expert engineering advice, or should a desperate client or irate property owner calls, I’m here to take the call and tend to office business. But most of the time for that hour is my own.

My current project during the first 20 minutes of that hour is completion of my Harmony of the Gospels. I began this back in 2001, when I was in the early stages of writing Doctor Luke’s Assistant, and gave lots of thought to how Luke gathered his information, how his was different from the other gospels, etc. So I began taking some notes. This eventually grew into three spiral notebooks, stenno size. Beginning with the Triumphal Entry, I wrote out the parallel texts, discussed how to harmonize them, and wrote the harmony. All long hand. Okay, some of it is in my own special shorthand. On occasion, the discussion was long, mainly when the gospels appeared to have different timelines and I worked out the apparent discrepancies.

I finished the Harmony somewhere around 2005. My goal was to make one seamless text out of the four. There are a lot of parallel column harmonies around, both ancient and modern. I didn’t figure we needed one of those. I wanted to do the unified text kind. Why? Partly as my own Bible study tools, but also because I thought such a text would be useful. I had no real intention to seek publication of this. It was a labor of love, not profit. Some might think it a waste of time, and perhaps it was, or still is.

I told my former pastor about it (he’s since moved to another church), and he wanted to see it. The problem was, it was all still in handwritten manuscript. So I typed it. 104 letter-sized pages in 12 point font. I decided I should go ahead and type my notes as well. I divided them into two types: passage notes, which dealt with blending specific portions of the text; and appendices, which dealt with larger issues and timelines. I identified nine appendices needed, and quickly produced three of them. Then I jumped to the passage notes.

I quickly discovered that what I had written in the notebooks would not do for typed material. Sometimes I made flip comments, things only I would want to see, or at least I wouldn’t want someone else to see. Some were not correct. Most were in my grammatical shorthand. So I took the notebooks and began typing passage notes from them, but mostly I re-wrote them as I went along, putting them in correct grammar, expanding on concepts I must have had in my head but didn’t write in the notebooks, sometimes changing my mind. All this time I also kept re-reading the Harmony itself, looking for typos or things that seemed could be improved.

I came to a point where I had about forty or fifty pages of appendices and passage notes, printed a proof copy for me and one to give to my pastor. He later made approving comments of it.

Lately (last three weeks) I have spent those fifteen or twenty minutes each weekday morning working on an added appendix, about the trial(s) of Jesus by Jewish officials, including Peter’s denials of Jesus. The time between the arrest in Gethsemane and handing Jesus over to Pilate. It is a fascinating study to see how these harmonize, and to try to work out one or two apparent discrepancies. I completed that appendix, which ran to eight pages, yesterday, proofed it at home last night, and made the corrections this morning. I also got a start on the passage notes for this section this morning. I estimate those will take me a week or a little more to do.

So if this is not a commercial project, and carving out writing time every day and week is so difficult and never winds up with enough writing time, why do I do this? Because I sense I should. Because it gives me more satisfaction, in a way, than the commercial projects I work on. Because I’m learning a lot as I do it. Because it presents me with many springboards for Bible study and research. Because it is very fulfilling.

At twenty minutes a day, I’m sure completion of the passage notes and a few more appendices will required another year, maybe more. I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, since this is a harmony of the NIV, which is a copyrighted work, I can’t really share it with people. The pastor’s copy was for his personal study, not review and comment, and I dare not give away any more.