Whoops!

I preached with my iPad on Sunday instead of a manuscript. I keep saying this to commend myself on my technology...but I obviously am not 'there' yet. I deleted the document to save space in my DropBox and did not post it to my blog. Not that every sermon needs to go here, but still.. Anyway, I went looking on my laptop and evidently I had ONLY the DropBox copy. Now, before DropBox, I kept copies on my hard drive, printed, emailed to myself, and on a flashdrive. Somehow, I got lazy or secure and kept only the one copy, a pdf that was still sitting in iBooks. Now I don't have Adobe and can't go in and copy it. But I have something else to post. a mindmap.

I've been using another new program called "Total Recall" to 'map out' my sermons before writing. It's tricky because I can't just copy and paste that text either. But I can email myself the html and paste that into a word or pages document. I then use that as the outline for my sermon. Only I have to be more linear than I would normally, in order for the html to print in the order I need. Maybe I'm defeating the whole purpose of mindmapping. ah well.

Here's last Sunday's sermon, as a map: (based on the previous week's lectionary text, of John 10:1-10)

The Honor

I have been told that my comment about the honor of preaching sounded sharp. That was hardly my meaning. I believe that preaching the gospel IS an honor and it is one that I'm working on currently as it is my honor to preach this Sunday. Using the lectionary texts is a great challenge and a discipline as each group of texts is handed to the preacher as a challenge to delve deeply into the Bible and listen. Genesis 12 begins this week's texts and is the call of Abram to go...to a place: tbd. Wow, that takes some serious discernment and he did not have the Psalms to turn to for reassurance and comfort. I suspect he "lifted his eyes to the hills" (Ps. 121) on more than one occasion. "Nic at Night" is the gospel lesson (Jn. 3) and is full of great light and dark images. Romans 4 rounds out the group as Paul recounts Abraham's journey of faith. So many gifts lie within these scriptures. I pray that I may share faithfully from them.