At some point today, I will have a third attempt at writing my sermon for Sunday. I'm sure attempt number one would have 'done' and attempt number two is 'better' but it is only now that I feel I know for sure where I ought to be going with it.

All of which makes me ponder the iterative - at least sometimes - nature of inspiration.  I won't repeat the old joke about the preacher who was told to trust God to tell him what to say rather than spending hours preparing a sermon, but it's 'moral' that we can only get 'out' what we put 'in' is self-evident.  Sometimes I find that as I write my sermons - I am someone who thinks by writing - they take a life of their own and words flow easily.  Sometimes I find it a halting process, each paragraph dragged from my subconscious and wrestled into submission.  Sometimes I find I have written way too much.  Other times.. no, not too little... I read it back and decide it's twaddle.

This week I knew pretty much what I wanted to work with... some feedback from last week, three Bible passages and a little book called Seven Spiritual Gifts of Waiting by Holly W Whitcomb (pub. Augsburg Books 2005).  Attempt number one involved a bit of expositing of one of the passages... which meant the grounding of the seven facets became clumsy and contrived.  Attempt number two, yesterday, ploughed its way systematically through the seven facets, linking obliquely to the passages, becoming long-winded and frankly rather tedious as well as lacking any real depth. Overnight my mind has mulled away (another way it works!) and I think I now know what I want to do, choosing two or three facets of what I'm calling a 'meantime spirituality' and exploring them with reference to the passages I've chosen and insights from the Hebrew concept of 'dayeinu'.  Not saying any more just now, but feeling, in retrospect, that this iterative inspriation is actually an example of meantime spirituality in and of itself.