Lost in a sermon

When I was a little girl I often accompanied my father on the weekends to small churches in eastern North Carolina. We would drive through the humid Sunday mornings with my father’s sermon folded up between the pages of his hardback Bible. The sermon I loved the most was “Lost in the Mystery of God.” I heard my father preach it several times and I never got tired of hearing it.

I can see the manuscript of that sermon: the title centered at the top in all capital letters, the typed text double-spaced and marked up with handwritten changes. But I can’t remember the words themselves. Like many books I’ve read and loved, I can only remember the way that sermon made me feel. It made me feel as if the world was opening up around me, behind and before and on every side. It made me feel a kinship with devoted people of every faith. It made me feel that God was shining on the surface of things but also hidden in depths beyond my reach. I would love to read that sermon again. But unfortunately it is lost.

I’ve asked my parents about it. My mother thinks it was based on a psalm, and my father says the sermon wouldn’t seem as wonderful to me if we still had a copy of it. It’s a better sermon in your memory, he tells me, than it was in real life. Yes, my memory is faulty. I’m not always sure what day it is when I wake up in the morning. When I need to remember how old I am, I sometimes have to do the math.