“Every preacher has a different routine for preparing a sermon. My own begins with a long sitting spell with an open Bible on my lap, as I read and read and read the text. What I am hunting for is the God in it, God for me and for my congregation at this particular moment in time. I am waiting to be addressed by the text by my own name, to be called out by it so that I look back at my human situation and see it from a new perspective, one that is more like God’s… It is a process of discovery in which I run the charged rod of God’s word over the body of my own experience and wait to see where the sparks will fly.”

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Barbara Brown Taylor in The Preaching Life