Carpe Spellcheck

As Program Director for the past four summers, one of my greatest responsibilities was developing our Bible themes. The biggest portion of that was writing and directing skits for Joshua, The Exodus, Noah and Joseph. Fortunately, God has given us a pretty incredible narrative and generally dialogue to follow. Lots of times, I did a bit of cutting and pasting from the NIV online. Other times I typed from an open Bible.

After staring and reading and poring over parts of scripture so intently, I have often found myself laughing over the way things are translated, or the content of scriptures. "That seems acceptable to me" is something Moses said often. I liked that so much I said it all summer when people asked for input or permissions.

Sometimes, scriptural typos occurred. (My fault completely!) This summer, on the first day of camp, when I was most nervous and anxious about how the skits went, I looked down and realized I had not corrected a glaring typo. (Apparently spell check had not been ever used on the scripts).

We were at the beginning of God establishing a covenant with Abraham. For some reason, we had not practiced with the "voice of Yahweh" and Benton was backstage reading the lines as Abraham was onstage. I was in the back of the pavilion following along with my script.

"Abram, Abram" read Benton.

"Yes, Lord?" said Myles as Abram

(Hmm . . . going well, great, hmm--oh, drat! I forgot to fix that, but surely Benton will catch it . . . )

"Do not fear, Abram, for I am your Shilef, your very great reward" reads Benton

(NOO!!! I am literally rolling off the picnic table. Tears are running down my face)

Benton and the campers thought "Shilef" was some Hebrew word, I'm sure. "Wow that Paula is sure staying authentic to scripture," I'm sure they were thinking, "she's using Hebrew."

That passage is forever tainted now. I've heard it preached at least once since then and I definitely got the giggles.

So, Tuan: as you prepare the skits for the summer: read over them carefully! Lest David slay Goliath the gnat.