As promised, here is a PDF for you to download and use for your very own sentence diagram. I will always provide one for each passage of scripture we study, but I will keep nagging you to try it for yourself. Once you do it a few times, I’m confident you will get the hang of it.
I was discussing how my process of sentence diagramming has morphed over the years. In the beginning, it was on a piece of notebook paper with an entire pink eraser chunk. You know the ones that were clean and pretty at the beginning of the school year and were dirty and in multiple pieces by November? Yes, I would erase a lot.
Then I moved to trying to use a word processor after a few years. The tabbing situation is complicated to get the parts of the sentence where you want it, but it was easier undo and redo.
Finally, the Bible software we were given developed a sentence diagramming tool that made the whole process exponentially easier.
However, the exercise of writing out the text whether by hand or by typing is a valuable one. It’s another way for the text to get into our heads and thereby get into our hearts. If it’s challenging for now, that’s okay. Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing, right?
One other thing, which may make it easier for someone who is trying to use a word processing program, Jeremy told me he uses an outline format when he does diagramming. Here is what he wrote me when we were texting back and forth:
I don’t do it that way, but maybe that will make more sense to you. Ultimately, there are many ways to do this exercise. The important thing is that we should do it. Or something like it. Just like starting an exercise regimen, it may be awkward and horrible, but in the end you’ll be glad you did.
Our Bite for today is the wee little nibble that we want to be immersing ourselves in the Word. Whether we are reading, writing, listening, or speaking. Sentence diagramming for ourselves is one more way to be getting the Word into our spiritual digestive tract.
