You can tell when the hard yards have been done

Listening to an excellent sermon yesterday morning I appreciated very much that some hard work had gone into its preparation. There was simply too much detail in the explanation of the main scriptural passage for this sermon to be anything other than a well prepared one.

Incidentally by 'detail' I do not mean 'lots of information, ultimately tedious to have to listen to as it was listed for us.' Not at all: another sign of the hard work in preparation was the way in which the detail was presented. Not too much, not too little. Relevant to the passage, interesting to the congregation. Conveyed with a light touch. A minor rather than a major part of the sermon.