A Sheep Among Wolves. I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Matthew 10:16. Jerry Salley

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1 A Sheep Among Wolves I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Matthew 10:16 Jerry Salley

2 A Sheep Among Wolves All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version (North American Edition), Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. Copyright 2004 by Peggy Chalk Salley First Edition Hilha Publishers In association with instantpublisher.com All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission from the copyright holder. International Standard Book Number:

3 For Peggy, the maiden who freed herself and rescued her knight

5 But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:31 Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and wellpreserved body. But rather it's to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, "Wow! What a ride!" Anonymous quote gleaned from the Internet

7 Table of Contents Forward 9 Introduction 11 That Boy Isn t Stupid 12 Halloween 15 The Preacher s Wife 16 I Am Sending You Out 18 Memphis, Michigan 24 Show Me The Money 26 Rocks And Feathers 28 Late Night Adventures 30 Hunting Among The Savages 32 I Love You 36 Lost And Found 38 Observations 40 Jerry, The Hero 44 Beyond Expectations 45 What Is It I Do Around Here? 48 My Journey 50 Part-Time Christians 55 It s A Methodist Thing 57

8 On The Job Training 58 On The Job Training Part II 59 Brotherly Love 60 Blessed Are The Cheese Makers 62 The Wilderness 63 The Wilderness Part II 65 A Simple Question 70 The Possum 71 Mark Twain And Me 72 Coincidences 77 I ve Always Been Crazy 78 And In Conclusion 81 Sermons Of Dogs and Sermons 85 Banana Pudding 87 How To Preach The Wrong Scripture 91 A Funeral For A Friend 98 I Love This Bar 103 Poetry Some Dark Morning 113 Screams 114 Don Quixote 115 Peggy s Song 116

9 FORWARD In 2002 I began to put together a collection of short devotionals. I used stories from my life that I had used as illustrations in some of my sermons, and I intended to come up with enough of them to write a book. I worked on it for a few months, off and on, and then laid it all aside. It still semed like a good idea, and I had fun doing it, but we moved from Senatobia to Meridian and I began to be too busy to get back to the book. Then about two months ago I dug out all the material and began to organize it. I realized I didn t have nearly enough for a book, but I could work on it and maybe finish it someday. That s when everything came unglued. I wound up in the hospital with what was diagnosed as inoperable cancer. A death sentence. How long do I have? I don t know. The doctors make guesses based on averages and percentages but they don t seem to know either. When my family found out about my cancer they all came to Meridian to see me. One of the first things Liza and Christopher asked me to do was to write down some of the things in my life that I could share with them. They didn t know about the book, but it seemed like the perfect way to do what they asked. So I began writing again, only this time expanding my original concept and writing more of an autobiography in short sections. A lot of the original material is still here, but some of it has been deleted, and a lot of what I ve added really wouldn t fit in a book of devotions. 9

10 So what we have here is a collection of stories, some inspirational, I hope, and some just very personal. Maybe you ll find at least some of it interesting. My life has changed dramatically since I came home from the hospital. I have been overwhelmed with the love and encouragement and support of those around me, especially those in the churches I now serve, Wesley and Sageville. Saint Paul s United Methodist in Clarksdale planned a twenty-four hour prayer vigil as a birthday present for me, and I ve received cards, letters, and phone calls from many churches and individuals letting me know that I m on their prayer lists. Although I am grateful, I feel very undeserving of the attention I have received. I claim all of Christ s promises as my own, and I have no fear of the future. My only regret is that I feel like I have somehow betrayed those I love by dying and leaving them behind. The introduction that follows and a lot of the rest of the stories are just as I wrote them almost two years ago. There s also a lot of new material. Jerry Salley October

11 INTRODUCTION Whether I gave you this book, you bought it, you stole it, (wait a second, isn t there a commandment about that ) or you borrowed it, you probably already know that I am a second-career minister. That s right, I haven t always been a preacher and I haven t always been a Methodist. In fact, I haven t always been anything except just me. Along the way to becoming who I am today, I ve been a deputy sheriff, a bouncer, a reporter, a photographer, a schoolteacher, and an actor. I ve had enough money to be foolish with, and been broke enough to be in danger of starving except for friends and family. I ve been loved and betrayed and done the same to others. I ve done some incredibly stupid things in my life and somehow managed to get away with them. I ve also been blessed far more than I deserve. This book is mainly about the blessings. I haven t always been aware of God in my life, but when I look back at things, I know the Lord was always there. And somehow I feel that most of the things that happened in my life were preparing me for today. I didn t know it at the time, but God did. Some of the lessons I ve learned in life are in this book. It s a collection of random thoughts and events that are only tied together by the fact that they all happened to me. Some of them would probably make good sermon illustrations. I know that, because I ve used them myself. I ve even included a few sermons. If you ve read this far, you might as well keep going. 11

12 THAT BOY ISN T STUPID Some of my earliest memories are of being in the doctor s office in the back of a drugstore in Inverness, Mississippi. I actually don t remember being sick as a child, but I do remember getting well. Getting well took a long time. When I was a baby one of the most feared diseases was polio, and I had it. I was one of the lucky ones. Most of us think of polio as a disease that cripples people and in severe cases either kills or causes its victims to wind up in an iron lung. Paralytic polio does all of those things and there were epidemics of it before an effective vaccine was finally developed. There s another kind of polio that s not so well known, and it is called bulbar polio. Bulbar polio is a classic two-edged sword. It only happens in about five percent of polio cases, and it s more likely to kill you than paralytic polio. On the other hand, if you survive bulbar, you have much better chances of complete recovery. That s the one I had. I don t remember having polio because I was only two at the time, and I had almost recovered by the time I was four. The reason I say I had almost recovered is because bulbar polio affects breathing, swallowing, and speech. As a result of the disease I couldn t really talk very well when I was young. To give you an example of how bad my speech was, my nickname was Gunh. Okay, maybe that s not how you spell it, but I m not sure I ve ever known anybody else with that name so I don t know how to spell it. I think that was my nickname because that was as close as I could get to pronouncing my own name. 12

13 Not being able to talk well led to some interesting developments. For a while my older brother, Oscar, was my interpreter to the rest of the world. He played with me enough and paid enough attention to me that he knew what I was trying to say when nobody else not even my parents could understand me. I didn t do well in school because the teachers seemed to assume that since I couldn t talk, I probably wasn t too smart either. It s a funny thing, but a teacher thinking a student is mentally slow can cause that student to be slow. I still remember my second grade teacher getting excited and taking me to the principal to show me off because I had finally learned my colors. That was also about the time that I got hit in the head by a schoolyard swing and had a hard time trying to convince people that all the blood was caused by a string. Swing string, it was as close as I could get. By the time I was in the second grade my speech had actually improved tremendously from what it had been before I met Brother Weaver. I had started school in Inverness, Mississippi, and then we moved to a farm in Arkansas and I finished the first grade there. Across the street from the school was a Methodist church, and that s where my family attended. As the minister got to know our family, he announced to my parents one day, That boy isn t stupid. He just can t talk. From that day forward I was Brother Weaver s special project. I would go to the parsonage in the morning and he would work with me on pronouncing words, and then I would go to school. The school didn t mind me being out because they didn t think I could learn anything anyway. My parents weren t sure if the time with the preacher would help, but nobody had anything to lose while trying, and I didn t care because I 13

14 didn t like school anyway. After all, who wants to be around a bunch of people you can t talk to? Brother Weaver never got to see the final results of his project because he and his family were appointed to another church. In the middle of the second grade we moved back to Mississippi and I was talking well enough that most of the teachers knew I had a speech problem, but they didn t think I was retarded. I still didn t like schoolwork, and somewhere along the way I went from being stupid to being lazy. I probably graduated high school with one of the lowest grade point averages in history, and I dropped out of college twice before I finally gave it one last shot. Eventually I even earned two Master s Degrees. My parents stayed in contact with the Weavers for years after they moved. They exchanged Christmas cards and occasional letters. Unfortunately, by the time I realized how much Brother Weaver had changed my life, he had died. I still think about him, still remember him slowly saying words and me trying to say them back to him. I don t have a lot of regrets in life, but one of the major ones is that I never thanked him for what he gave me. He taught me to talk, of course, but he also gave me the knowledge that I could do more than other people thought I could. Without him, I m not sure where I would be today, but it almost certainly wouldn t be in the pulpit. 14

15 HALLOWEEN In spite of the fact that I really do enjoy all the trick or treaters who come by the house every year, Halloween isn t as much fun as it was when I was younger. And that s not just because it s more fun to be a child and dress up. You see, I was born on Halloween. Every year on my birthday my brothers and I would dress up and total strangers would give us candy. We got to go to town and walk around from door to door getting all sorts of treats. Some people would even invite us in and we would bob for apples or play silly games. By the time my sister was old enough to join us I had figured out it was a holiday and it wasn t all just for me. It was still fun, but I wasn t the star anymore. 15

16 THE PREACHER S WIFE One thing I ve discovered is that there s no such thing as a typical minister s wife. Some of them enjoy all sorts of church work and will volunteer to do whatever needs to be done around the church. Others prefer to sort of stay in the background and wait to be called before they ll do much of anything. Some teach Sunday school and others don t even attend a class. Because I ve gotten to know a lot of ministers, I ve also met a lot of minister s wives. I suppose you could develop categories for minister s wives but there would have to be a lot of categories because they are simply representative of people in general. No matter how many categories you came up with, however, I don t think you d ever find more than one Mrs. Weaver. Mrs. Weaver was the wife of the minister who helped me learn to talk, and you ve already read that story in these pages. The funny thing is I don t remember very much about her. What I do remember is a time when I was about six years old and my mom carried me with her to visit Mrs. Weaver. Like all Methodist ministers from time to time, Reverend Weaver was moving to a new church and mother wanted one last chance to say goodbye to them. When we arrived at the parsonage, Mrs. Weaver was in the backyard working in her garden. My mother, with a surprised look on her face, asked why Mrs. Weaver had even planted a garden that she would never see mature. Mrs. Weaver looked just as surprised as mother had and explained softly, Why, it would be too late for the new people to plant anything, you know. 16

17 Here was a lady who had dug up the ground, planted a garden and was now weeding it and caring for it, knowing she would never pick the first bean from it. No carrots, tomatoes, corn or any of the rest would ever ripen for the Weavers. But she knew that whoever moved in after them would need a garden, so she planted one for them. I don t know where the Weavers moved, and I don t know if anybody had planted a garden for them, but I hope that somebody did. And I hope they planted a few flowers, too. 17

18 18 I AM SENDING YOU OUT It was 1961 and I was a senior in high school. I think I was probably a pretty typical teenager: girls were my first concern, and cars, music, and food, in no particular order, followed them. Or at least the order depended upon what was at hand at the moment. Riding to a party where there was girls, music, and something to eat might have been my first idea of heaven. I had grown up in the country on a typical Mississippi Delta plantation, and when I was 15 we moved to town. Well, I guess you could say we moved to town. We moved to Belen, population 86. We knew the population was 86 because one night a group of us sat down and listed everybody who lived in town that s how small it was. Almost everybody in town went to church. And you didn t just go to church on Sunday morning for an hour there was the Sunday night service (a lost tradition in many of our communities) Sunday School, fellowship, choir practice, prayer meeting, and lots of other occasions to come together and worship. For most of us, going to church, meant going to the only church in town and it was Southern Baptist, so we were all Southern Baptists. I had been baptized in a Methodist Church, but that didn t count, so one fine summer evening I went under the water and became a Baptist. It wasn t too long after that when I began to feel the Lord wanted more from me than just being a church member. My Uncle Joe had told me years before that God had something special in mind for me and I began to feel that maybe he had been right. During the invitational

19 hymn one Sunday night I walked the aisle and declared my intention to be a preacher. So, without much fuss or ceremony the deacons met, questioned me, and gave me a license to preach. I was on my way. Sometime in the early 1960 s the wolves got me. They didn t devour me, of course, but instead invited me in and I visited with them for a long time. A very long time. Some of the stories in this book are about the life I led during those years among the wolves. I suppose I m still living among the wolves, just as we all are. The trick is to live with them without becoming one of them. It s not as easy as it sounds. Looking back over the stories in this book causes me to look ahead. I have to admit I m excited about whatever might be around the next corner. One thing my life has never been is boring. 19

20 MEMPHIS, 1969 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' Matthew 25:40 The girl I thought I was going to marry had just left me. We all handle broken hearts in different ways, and I didn t handle this one too well. Oh, I had endured failed relationships before and had survived them quite well, but this one was different. I couldn t come to terms with the fact that I was alone again and sank into total depression. There s more about this time of my life elsewhere in the book, so you can understand that it was a traumatic time for me, and elsewhere I ve described it as a desperate time. One particularly dark evening I knew I just couldn t go on the way things were. I began to reflect on my lack of faith and the fact that I no longer attended church. I knew that God had asked something very special of me when I was younger and I had rejected that calling. I began to feel guilty and felt that perhaps I was being punished because of the lifestyle I had chosen. I now know that God doesn t work that way, but at the time I accepted what was happening as my punishment for the life I led. I wanted to straighten out my life. I wanted to feel close to God again. Maybe I just wanted to feel close to anybody. Maybe I wanted to make a deal with God you know what I m talking about, we ve all done it. If you ll only make things better, then I ll be a better person. 20

Breaking Free: Week One 1

Breaking Free: Week One 1 Remember the song My Way by Frank Sinatra? The start of the second verse says Regrets, I've had a few, But then again, too few to mention I did what I had to do And saw it through