Space 10.24.2024

     I’m late. I should have finished this first draft a couple of days ago, done some editing yesterday, polished it up this morning and then posted it. It’s nearly noon and I ‘m just beginning my draft. Why? Sermon calendar work was a priority, and I spent the morning revisiting, reconsidering, revising, then redoing the work I had already done. It is getting toward the end of the month, and I had the time to do this primarily because I built space into the schedule for this critical month. 

    If you work with your brain, you will find that you not only need diversion, but you also need room. If the well is too full it can be difficult to dip out the water without spilling some, wasting it or losing track of it. You need a little bit of room to grow, to breathe, to function. 

    I try to encourage you to work hard at fulfilling your ministry. Preparing to preach and teach is hard, exacting, lonely, frustrating, and invigorating work. We each need to allow space for the information we learn to be incorporated into our previous understanding. If you are diligent at good, applied exegesis you will gain insights that will require you to think, absorb, and recalibrate your approach. If you read commentaries, theologies, and other materials parallel to what you are preaching, you will need time to consider new and challenging concepts. If you hammer out good sermons you will want to let them sit for a couple of days, marinate, age, and tenderize. Then you will want to revisit them in terms of structure, accuracy, theological depth, and practical application. 

    Each of these scenarios expect the same thing. Enough time. Enough distance. Enough space. You need space. Your mind needs space. Your thinking needs space. Your sermons need space. I was able to totally revamp my sermon calendar this morning, something I had been pondering for at least a couple of days, because there was time and space. Even though there are still many practical matters to attend to, even after lots of revision and cutting, even after second-guessing and banging my head on the desk—three-quarters of next year’s preaching is scheduled in my Things to do list. 

    In fact, the space itself provoked the tinkering. It was because time and space were built into the process that I could make changes to my emerging plan. I have been doing enough preliminary reading, sketching, outlining, and thinking that I knew that this morning was the time to act on some of that tinkering. It was nearly time to transition from preparing my preaching calendar to actually scheduling work. If I wanted to make significant changes, this was the day, because this is where I had provided space for those kinds of changes.  The air in my schedule, the space left between tasks, the detailed reading, preparing Bibliography, and skimming resources gave me the chance to nail down what I thought would be important in 2025. I was able to think through things and pray for wisdom, discretion, discernment, and perspective. Without the time and space, it is not uncommon for our prayers to become desperate pleas for deliverance. 

    I think it is best to work in partnership with God and to use all the tools we have available. Panic is not nearly as effective as planning. We have books and essays, calendars and to-do lists, paper and pencil, colleagues, congregants, and students. Our own past preaching and the piles of work we have laid in store. When we dedicate the time and allow for enough space, we give God’s Holy Spirit plenty of room to move so that God’s voice is clearly present and artfully articulated in our preaching.