As it just so happened, we worked on a recording in Revelation just before moving to work again on the creation of the world. When in Revelation, the Dong coworker had a hard time remembering and visualizing all the details about the river flowing out from the throne, and the tree that stood on both sides of the river, and the fruit the tree produced. A lot of details are there, but as God sometimes sets things up, the time we spent on the details in Revelation were perfectly timed for our next work task in Genesis.
We went back to Genesis to fix up the story on creation, and I began to see the similarities in the two stories. My Dong friend did not realize it at first, but somewhere in the middle, I asked him, does this stuff about the tree and river sound familiar.
He has a tendency to get caught up in the details and not really think too hard about the overall meaning. Once he thought to look for the similarities, I began asking him what he thought the similarities meant.
We started talking about our God who has no flaws, who created a world that also had no flaws. The world was perfect, and Eden was his chosen location for man to dwell. In the end (in Revelation), we see that he is preparing (or preserving) Eden for us again. The Tree of Life, from which Adam and Eve could not eat, bears fruit that brings life, and its leaves provide healing. The river which nourishes all things. That perfect creation was tainted by man's sin.
As we pray for continued progress on these stories, so that those who cannot confidently read the Chinese-language Bible can hear the stories in their own Dong language, let us continue to pray that the Holy Spirit will speak through those working on the project to say things in a way which is understandable to the Dong people.
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