This post is adapted from a talk I gave a few months ago at church. Several people have asked for a copy of the talk, and I'm finally getting around to writing it up. When I do public speaking, I never write my remarks out verbatim. Instead, I write notes of the main points I want to cover and then speak extemporaneously. As a result, instead of the text of my talk, what follows is an essay based on the same notes I used to give the talk. It will be similar but not identical.
