Mondays

It’s Monday. I really love Mondays. For one thing, they come right after Sundays, which have the potential to be awesome days for me, depending on whether I get to teach my gospel doctrine lesson that day (a calling which I share with another teacher). When you only teach every other week it allows a lot of time to read and think about the topic, and you know the old saying that there is no greater burden than an undelivered sermon—it’s also true for Sunday School lessons. Yesterday I taught, and today I feel “unburdened!” But by tomorrow I will have read my next lesson and begun to think about it.

Here’s how preparing a lesson goes for me. Monday is my free day. Then I read the reading block and the lesson. Invariably I think, “How in the world am I going to turn that into a lesson that is interesting and engaging! Over the next few days I read the material again and again and begin considering the key concepts covered. I have a whole library full of commentaries, institute manuals, old lessons I’ve taught over the years, my personal filing system which houses things I’ve collected for forty years, and a few internet sources I look at. Over a period of days, thoughts come into my mind, or something in an article I read jumps out at me, or I happen to think of an experience I had years ago. The Lord is so good, and as I pray for direction and inspiration in my preparation I can always recognize his hand in the way things turn out. I love this calling!