Devotionals
For writing that is not tied to a single verse — devotionals, exhortations, studies, reflections and prayers.
Devotionals versus notes
Notes are verse-keyed: they hang off a passage. A devotional is a standalone document. It may cite scripture heavily, and those citations are live links, but the document is organised by its own argument rather than by chapter and verse. Devotionals live behind the Write button on the home screen.
The library
The library lists every devotional in a collection, searchable by title, subtitle and tag, and sortable by date, title or last change. Its menu filters by tag, category and date, exports, and imports a devotional someone sent you. A collection is a module: you start with My Devotionals, and can create more in the module manager and switch between them from the library’s title.
The editor
A devotional has five modes, chosen from the menu in its bottom toolbar:
| Mode | For |
|---|---|
| Read | Reading it back, with its own text size |
| Visual Edit | Writing with a formatting toolbar |
| Markdown Edit | Typing the markdown directly |
| Present | Delivering it — see below |
| Edit Metadata | Title, author, date, category and tags |
What you write is stored as the markdown you wrote, so switching between the visual and markdown editors never rewrites your text. Edits save a few seconds after you stop typing, and an icon in the toolbar shows when they have synced.
What the visual editor offers
| Element | Notes |
|---|---|
| Paragraphs and headings | Three heading levels, for structuring a talk |
| Bold and italic | Strikethrough and inline code by markdown shortcut |
| Lists | Bulleted or numbered, with indent and outdent for nesting |
| Scripture quote | A passage from a chosen translation, with its citation |
| Regular quote | An ordinary blockquote for other sources |
| Horizontal rule | A break between sections |
| Table | Up to ten rows and six columns, with an optional header row |
| Link | A web address, a scripture reference, or a Strong’s number |
| Footnote | Inserted at the cursor — see below |
| Image | From your photo library, the camera, or Files |
| Audio | Recorded in the app, or imported from Files |
Inserting scripture
Rather than typing a reference and hoping you got it right, Scripture Quote lets you pick translation, book, chapter, and start and end verse, choose whether to keep the verse numbers, and preview the text before inserting it with its citation. For a reference in running text, add a scripture Link: in Read and Present modes it opens the passage in a preview.
Footnotes
Footnote adds a marker at the cursor and its note in one step, so a single Undo removes both. While editing, tap a marker to jump to its note, and tap the note’s number to return. Notes can run to several lines and carry bold, italic and links.
Footnotes are numbered 1, 2, 3 in the order they are first referred to, wherever they were written. In the markdown a marker can have any label — [^1], [^lewis], [^2a] — and the label you chose is kept; only the numbering shown to a reader is worked out. A marker used twice shares one note.
Images and audio
Images are kept at full resolution; tap one to view it full screen. To record, choose Record Audio — a spoken meditation, or the talk as delivered — with a timer and a live waveform while you record. Recordings are AAC; imported audio can be M4A, MP3, WAV or AAC. Tap an audio block to play or pause it.
Metadata
Each devotional carries fields that make a growing collection navigable:
- Title and subtitle, and an author name.
- Date — the date you assign it, not just when the file was written.
- Category — devotional, exhortation, reflection, study, prayer or other.
- Tags, which become filters in the library and in search.
- Series and key scriptures — the passages the piece is built on, stored as real verse references and shown at the top. These come from a markdown or file import.
Present mode
Present mode reformats a devotional for delivery from a lectern: text scaled up by a multiplier you set, with extra line spacing so you can find your place while looking up, and footnotes and links set aside. Text size for reading and presenting is set independently of the Bible reader’s.
Sharing
Share Devotional File sends a devotional through the system share sheet as a .lamp file. There are two forms, chosen automatically:
- Plain — a single JSON document, for devotionals with no media.
- Bundled — a ZIP package carrying the document and its images and audio together, so nothing breaks in transit.
Share as Markdown sends the text alone. Because .lamp is a registered document type, a file someone sends you opens in Lamp Bible directly. Before anything is imported you get a preview of what the file contains and choose which collection it goes into; importing a file holding a whole collection brings in every entry rather than just the first.
Reading them beside the text
The reader’s tool panel has a Devotionals mode, so a piece you wrote — or one someone shared with you — can sit alongside the passage it discusses.