Sudoko and Sermons

I think there is some relationship between doing Sudoko and sermon preparation for me.
I start the day with some sort of puzzle - often Sudoko or Spider Solitaire (4 decks). I like solving puzzles and I like the process of trying different solutions out and having them come together. I also like it when I make a lucky guess and it turns out to be the right way.

At some point in the week - today it is Thursday - I really buckle down and start to do the pre-work of sermon preparation. Which involves copying and pasting the text onto a file and just looking at it a while. It is the beginning of solving this week's puzzle for me. I bold some words, I separate out sentences and phrases and sort of wait. Often I get a sense of the direction I want to go. This week the text is John 12: 20-36 and I am intrigued by the time mentions - "the hour has come." Jesus has a timetable for what he is doing? Knowing when God wants him to offer up his life? Is there something about our lives that we need to know what time it is? As I get older I am aware of not missing out on what is important? Lots of thoughts floating around here. And don't know what is the text and what is me and what is me distorting this. Don't know yet. It's a puzzle? a Mystery?

Then I go to text week and start reading. And if there are ideas that appeal to me - and that match whatever has been the first thinkin about what this is saying to me and us - I do some copying and pasting. Then I wait a little while. Re read.

I check out whatever I have in my library on John. And write some notes and wait awhile.

At some point I get an outline - because I do sermon notes every week, I allow the outline to come to me gradually. My preaching is really linear and I used to apologize for that - until I heard Joan Chittister speak and talk about how she thinks in outline forms. So do I - I think it is the "puzzle brain."

Anyway, this is certainly a process that can seem stressful - but more likely is an interesting dynamic that I go through every week. The outline comes, the words start to get filled in, and then illustrations pop up in my reading and my life. I finish sometimes on Friday, sometimes on Saturday njight and sometimes there is a change on Sunday morning.

In my 19th year of preaching weekly, I have learned to trust God will give me what I need through it all. What is interesting now is that I can be preaching on texts that I have preached on before and find something different in it that really excites me.
I like it best when I really have the time to let it marinate - but if it is a busyweek, God comes through.

It is a puzzle and it is certainly a HOLY mystery how God uses the different dynamics within all of us who preach every Sunday.