by Guy Sayles | Sep 28, 2010 | Uncategorized
Yesterday, we had the memorial service for my friend and, until her death, our current Deacon Chair, Dorothy Murphree. Dorothy was one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever known. She had a keen and agile mind, an insatiable curiosity, and a passion for...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 20, 2010 | Uncategorized
A person’s soul is like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon: its development should not be hurried; its emergence should not be rushed; its walls should not be forced open. Each soul has its own God-given rhythm, its own fullness of time. No one else should take a...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 15, 2010 | Uncategorized
After Deacons’ meeting Monday night, I drove to Atlanta so that I could be at the Mercer University School of Theology on Tuesday morning to be the guest presenter in a couple of classes and to preach in chapel. In the first class, I talked about the leader’s role in...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 8, 2010 | Uncategorized
We eventually learn that there isn’t much hope for us without forgiveness. Without forgiveness, we are bound to our failures, trapped in our guilt, and locked-up in isolation, with nothing to hold onto but our anger. That’s why, I think, the now-aging rock and roll...
by Guy Sayles | Sep 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
Walter Wangerin’s charming fable The Book of the Dun Cow is set in a chicken coop. One of my favorite scenes has the rooster Chauntecleer try to figure-out who has been stealing and eating the hen’s eggs. His prime suspect is John the Weasel, who has a long track...
by Guy Sayles | Aug 23, 2010 | Uncategorized
From time to time, I am drawn back to this brief poem by William Stafford. He offers wise words about wisdom. It’s not easy to be wise about wisdom, since, when we presume to be wise, we are often, at just those moments, blinded by our own folly; or because it’s hard...
by Guy Sayles | Aug 20, 2010 | Uncategorized
Did you hear about the monkeys who forgot how to climb and swing through the trees? Near the center of the country, there is a Dutch zoo where the orangutans had been kept from the trees for so long that they could not remember how to do what orangutans naturally do....
by Guy Sayles | Aug 10, 2010 | Uncategorized
The writer of Hebrews said: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is trusting that there is more to life than meets the eyes, but faith is not being gullible and unthinking. Christians are not like the...
by Guy Sayles | Aug 2, 2010 | Uncategorized
Success of any kind—more money, greater achievement, more recognition, more praise, and, especially, more power and influence—can (it doesn’t have to, but it can) put us in a precarious place. Success can turn us in on ourselves. We begin to believe our own...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 22, 2010 | Uncategorized
I recently read Martin Laird’s Into the Silent Land: An Introduction to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. Laird teaches at Villanova University, and he draws, in this book, on his academic specialty, patristics (the early centuries of the church,...
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