Love that participle

The participle is used much more widely and diversely in Greek than in English. It is the workhorse of the Greek verbal system, with participles being used for more actions than would be acceptable in English. This mismatch in usage has significantly impacted the participle’s grammatical description. Remember, our goal is to understand the Greek usage first, and only then should we worry about translation. The participle is one of those areas where it is imperative to think about Greek as Greek.—Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament, page 243 (emphasis original)