Time Out - the ideal time to plan your next act of destruction.

I played 18 on the regular course this morning. I may actually be getting the hang of this. I think I only missed two or three fairways.

Some of the details falling into place for upcoming Pathway changes. Looking good.

I have been reading an article in the current issue of Time Magazine on the trend toward single child families.

I planned to write about that article and my thoughts on the matter. But I got to thinking about the English language, and that sentence in particular.
This is beyond worthless, but I find it interesting so I'm going to write about it. This is my blog and I get to do that. If you choose to keep reading you've got no one to blame but yourself.

Think about these variations on that sentence and the way a slight change in wording communicates different things relative to timing:

• I read an article in Time Magazine.
• I just read an article in Time Magazine.
  
• I am reading an article in Time Magazine.
• I will read an article in Time Magazine.
  

Those variations could be arranged on a time line from left to right, beginning with the first one, "I read...." That wording says that at some point in the past, perhaps years ago, I read it. The next one, with the addition of the word "just" places the reading in the very recent past.
The third suggests I am currently reading it. But that's not possible because I'm typing this blog post right now. So the implication is that I've started the article, I'm working on finishing it, but have not yet done so.
The fourth sentence indicates my plan to read it at some point in the future.

Now go back and read the original sentence a few paragraphs up.
I have been reading....
How does that sentence differ in meaning from the third of the bulleted sentences?

I don't know the technical designations for these variations. Wish I did. Sure, past, present and future. But the others?
However, I think the original form - I have been reading - tells you what room in the house contains Time Magazine. That is, I think it varies from "I am reading..." by implying a series of intervals of reading separated by breaks for other things.

What's the point? There is none! It's just that driving into town this afternoon I got to thinking about that article, about what I think of it, and that I might write a post about it. In my head I composed the first sentence, "I have been reading...," and then went off on an ADD tangent about possible variations. And I thought it was interesting.
That's all.

However - the English language doesn't hold a candle to Greek!

Take, for example, the verb "saved." In Greek I can do the future (we'll work backward here), "I will be saved." Note that this verb is passive - someone else will save me - because I can't save myself. Even if we're talking drowning or escaping a burning building I wouldn't save myself. The very word "save" implies someone acting on another person's behalf. All the more so if we're talking spiritual salvation. And in the future I will be saved when God delivers me from this body of sin and death.

Or, I can use the present tense, "I am being saved." Except in Greek the present tense specifically means continuous action. So we should bring the present tense into English as, "I am currently being saved; it is an ongoing matter." This is true, too. God is daily forgiving me of the penalty of my sins and keeping me in his grace.

Greek doesn't have a past tense, per se. What it has is the aorist, which, when used in the indicative mood (don't worry about what that means because the aorist almost always occurs in the indicative mood) means point action in the past. So, "I was saved," if written with the aorist indicative, means, "At a specific point in the past I was saved." Think, conversion experience, the point when I rec'd the gift of salvation through Christ's substitutionary atonement.

Now it gets interesting!
Greek also has what they call the perfect tense, which refers to a point action in the past with results continuing into the present. In English it would be, "I was saved."
See the problem?? Because we don't have a parallel to Greek's perfect tense the meaning is lost...unless we do something like, "I was saved and am being saved."
That one fits me, too!

There's also the pluperfect, which means something done at a point in the past with results continuing, but not all the way into the present. Praise God, this one does NOT fit my salvation!
However, I could use the pluperfect to describe my experience with eating dinner:
"My hunger was satisfied after eating dinner."
Using the pluperfect would say, "And now it's time for supper."

Which it is. So I'll stop this and eat, again.

(I warned you this was going to be a waste of your time.)