by Guy Sayles | Dec 31, 2011 |
Thresholds can be frightening. Our ancient ancestors felt that thresholds were dwelling places for evil spirits. They believed that stepping on a threshold made them vulnerable to the spirits which lurked there, so they were careful to avoid them. Often, they posted...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 26, 2011 |
Some Christmas music, like Rutter’s and Vivaldi’s magnificent Glorias and Handel’s “Hallelujah” from Messiah, is transcendent and transfiguring. It takes us to places we could never otherwise go and changes us in ways we could not otherwise be changed. Some Christmas...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 22, 2011 |
In It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty and her friend Marcie argue about who will play the role of Mary in the annual Christmas pageant. Since their teacher already asked Marcie, she’s sure it will be her. But such trivial facts never bother...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 15, 2011 |
Love is in the details. The God made known to us in Jesus takes delight in our individuality, is lavishly attentive to our hurts and hopes, and is involved in the everyday, mundane details of our lives. God embraces all time and space, but God also holds each of us in...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 8, 2011 |
The Advent season puts us in touch with our yearning for peace. Sometimes, when I think about peace, my mind goes global. I consider large-scale and long-boiling cauldrons of conflict. When I do, I often go numb, because there doesn’t seem to be much I can do to make...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 27, 2011 |
Famously, when Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy stepped through the wardrobe in the old professor’s house, they entered the fantastic land of Narnia. It was winter. In fact, Mr. Tumnus, the Faun, said to the children: “It is winter in Narnia, and has been ever so long.”...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 22, 2011 |
Hope is always paradoxical. It offers tender comfort and stirs restless protest. It embraces those who suffer and insists that suffering will not have the last word. Theologian Jurgen Moltmann said that: “Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering, but...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 17, 2011 |
I wrote the following reflection as a guest post for Stan Dotson’s blog, “In Our Elements”: The cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz went searching for courage, and all of us, in anxious and fearful times, scramble to find it. Unlike the lion, though,...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 12, 2011 |
Novelist John Hassler wrote about a conversation he witnessed between two aging novelists, Frederick Manfred and J.F. Powers. Manfred, at seventy-one, had just finished novel number twenty-five and knew what the next four were going to be about. Then, he intended to...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 8, 2011 |
The title of J.B. Phillips classic book got it right: Your God is Too Small. He was right. Many of us have, sometimes without our knowing it, substituted a paltry and puny God for the great and gracious God made known in Jesus. We’ve manufactured a god from our fears...
Recent Comments