What Does Christmas Really Mean?

“Christmas is saying ‘yes’ to something beyond all emotions and feelings,” writes Henri Nouwen. “Christmas is saying ‘yes’ to a hope based on God’s initiative, which has nothing to do with what I think or feel. Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God’s work and not mine.”

Christmas is choosing for a change to take a look through the right end of the telescope and thrilling to the sight of God’s work written large rather than cringing before a universe shrunken, shriveled, and constricted, bounded on all sides by the nearsighted view of mortals almost as blind and dull as me.

Christmas means that the real question is not, “What must I do to be saved?” Not such a bad question for a jailer back in Philippi scared stiff about losing his head because of almost losing his prisoners (Acts 16). But the far better question for me is, “What has God already done to save me?” Christmas means finding that answer all wrapped up in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

Christmas means bringing the most precious of gifts to the Baby King not to enrich or impress him or add to the net worth of the One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and who gives me the gift of my every breath, but simply because I love him and want to joyfully place before him the best that I have.

Christmas means finding a fleeting moment of sanity when I’m less full of myself and more filled with Heaven as I focus not on me but on the God of all life and joy.

Christmas means that instead of trying to save humanity theoretically through my unceasingly serious efforts, I sit down with one or two giggling and very specific pint-size children or grandchildren and tell a story about how once upon a specific time in Bethlehem a star twinkled and angels sang, and then I hum them to sleep with “Silent Night.”

If I’ve got Christmas right and know the real story, then Christmas also means I’m free to laugh with the little ones and tell them old new stories about how Scrooges get over taking themselves too seriously and what happens on “The Night Before Christmas.”

Christmas, for me, is realizing that the wonderful writer G. K. Chesterton discovered something as important as the law of gravity when he wrote, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” It was through pride, he wrote, that Satan fell, and “the very skies were cracked across like a mirror, because there was a sneer in Heaven.” Christmas means that sugar plums always win over sneers, that the deadly self-serious always crash and burn, and that angels aren’t the only ones lifted into flight by Joy.

Christmas means that though you may get a tiresome tax form in January, all you have to do is look up on a Yuletide night to see that Bethlehem always beats Caesar and that the twinkling tinsel of Heaven’s stars all point forever to the One brightest, the One eternal.





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Christmas Points Us Toward Our True Home

Keeping Christmas is very much about valuing home and hearth, and that is a truth that even your basic, mostly housebroken, pagan understands.

A pox, by the way, on businesses, other than those who truly have no choice, who choose to stay open on Christmas supposedly for the convenience of the consumer. They should think more highly both of their own employees and of their customers. Their employees deserve better of them. And customers idiotic enough to be running about on Christmas Day shouldn’t be encouraged in such idiocy.

One of the many things I love about Christmas Day is that most of us have enough sense to treasure the precious time with our families. Yes, there’s some travel going on even on Christmas morning. But not much. Less than ever, in fact. And what little movement you’ll see happening on the roads on Christmas morning is travel being undertaken specifically so folks can be with family.

It’s rather remarkable. Even as a small child, I remember noticing it. The silence in the neighborhood. The surprising, and lovely, stillness.

If you step out your door on Christmas morning, you’ll probably see hardly anybody at all. Why? Well, again, even the most frenetic and hyperactive of us knows deep down that Christmas morning is a time to be inside with those we hold most dear. Even those who don’t hold Christmas Day holy for the best Reason, know it’s “holy” family time that should be left undisturbed. The phone won’t ring much, hardly at all, on Christmas morning, and when it does, you can bet the call or message will be from folks you love the most.

Oh, we’ll all start to venture out again. By Christmas afternoon, kids will be out on the driveway trying out their new bicycles or tricycles or skateboards or electric cars, playing with all sorts of new toys, and running through scads of batteries, learning how to work the new games and gadgets.

But the morning at least will be remarkably quiet, centered around home and hearth.

G. K. Chesterton once wrote of the paradox in his “Christmas Poem:” It’s when we come to Bethlehem in our hearts, to the stable where Mary and the baby homeless lay, that’s when we come truly “home”: “Only where He was homeless / Are you and I at home.”

Only when we seek Him, find Him, worship Him, do we find that we’ve come truly Home,

To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Home. It’s the best place to be. The Christ of Christmas points us to our true Home.





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

A Christmas Gift From My Mother

I received a nice Christmas present this morning that was truly a surprise: a letter from my mom.

One glance at the envelope told me who it was from. No reading required. My mother’s handwriting was the most beautiful I have ever seen. She could have written the book on perfect cursive and impeccable penmanship. Since Mom passed away in 1992, getting a letter from her was nothing I expected this Christmas.

Well, okay, actually the letter wasn’t written to me, it was just kindly handed to me by my friend Van McCormick. And it wasn’t written recently. Mom wrote it to my folks’ dear friends, Van’s parents, Leonard & Tennie McCormick, on “Saturday, Jan. 31, 1981.” Mom was replying to the note the McCormicks had sent in a Christmas card.

What Mom wrote brought back a warm flow of memories.

My oldest brother and sister-in-law had just returned from twenty years of missionary work in Malawi, Africa, and were moving into their new Stateside home in Houston.

Mom wrote about the beautiful weather they were having in Houston and told of her joy in being able to get back to her yard work. She was a gardening artist and the yard was her canvas. She describes in the letter “lots of azaleas, a few roses, narcissus, pansies, Johnny Jump-ups” and red pyracantha berries “keeping us and the birds happy.”

“G. B. [my dad],” Mom wrote, had recently been “somewhere in Mexico doing mission work. . . . He enjoyed it and feels there is much promise there for a fruitful work.” Understated is the deep relief I hear in her words as she says that “he has no plans to become deeply involved, such as any move in that direction.” But her words remind me again of how Dad loved to teach the Bible in Spanish (and long enjoyed teaching a weekly Bible class in Spanish).

Mom writes, “I’m just praying [for] God to help us know where he wants us to spend our remaining little day of life.” I know now how that prayer was long ago answered.

Mom wrote on about a visit she and Dad had enjoyed with the McCormicks. She just wished it could have been longer.

She wrote about my 89-year-old grandmother’s failing health, and expressed her sympathy for Tennie’s recent loss of a brother. She waxed philosophic about some “loneliness that can never be cured on this earth.” But she said, “We wouldn’t want to remain here on this [present] earth forever.”

Yes, this letter from my mom was quite a nice and unexpected gift this Christmas. In two little half-pages of her beautiful hand, she talks about what really is important in life, the joy and beauty God gives us right here, and our confident hope that God has in mind something far better that will never end.

The most important gifts my mother gave me still bless me every day. But it surely was nice this Christmas to get to open up this new one.







Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

For Those Who Believe, All Joy is God's Joy

You think it’s cold here? I just got back from the North Pole and . . .

Well, actually, it wasn’t that cold. And it wasn’t even north. It was more southwest. From Lubbock, Texas, to Brownfield, Texas. On the Polar Express train, complete with a conductor and hot chocolate and elves and Santa himself, and, most important, a two-and-a-half-year-old giggling granddaughter.

I don’t know what Brenley will one day remember about that train ride, but I’ll remember big brown eyes wide with delight. I hope it might become for her one of her earliest of a great many wonderful Christmas memories. It’s certainly added something precious to mine.

C. S. Lewis once put into words a wonderful truth about our lives and our faith. Early on, he said, it’s quite natural that a child can make no distinction between the religious meaning of holidays like Christmas and Easter and their merely “festal” character, by which he means Santa and Easter eggs, and all those many delightful traditions.

Lewis said he’d been told about a young boy who was heard on Easter morning “murmuring to himself” a poem he’d come up with on his own about “chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.” Lewis commented, “This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety.”

But he went on to observe that the time would surely come when the child would learn the difference between the “ritual” aspect of Easter and its “festal” aspect and then “chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental.”

And with that time will come a decision. He must “put one or the other first.” And here’s the important point: “If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.”

It’s true, you know. If we discard the deepest truths of our faith, it’s pretty hard to find much deep or lasting joy in Easter eggs and “Jingle Bells.”

But if our faith is in the Christ of Christmas and Easter, and if we really believe that God entered our world at Bethlehem and that death itself was no match for our risen Lord, then we live all year long in the wonderful glow of those deep truths. And those holidays become joyful holy days.

As long as we know what really is central to the seasons, well, then add in as much tinsel, as many lights, as many Christmas and Easter traditions as you like. Hunt the eggs, and take a ride on the Polar Express, and beam with delight as your little granddaughters fill up on hot chocolate and dance around the tree. You might occasionally run across someone toxically religious and afraid of experiencing too much joy. But our God has never been afraid of genuine joy. He is the Source of it.



Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

"My Child, Be Still and Be Quiet, and Listen Awhile!

“Be still, and know that I am God,” urges the Lord through the psalmist (Psalm 46:10). And the prophet writing in Lamentations 3:26 observes that “it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

God seems to be saying, “My child, take some time to be still and be quiet. Listen awhile.”

Kids like us have a hard time with God’s prescription. We rarely try it. Quietness bothers us. Stillness makes us nervous.

We so often lead unbalanced lives. We can and should honor the Lord in our work, our play, our rest, but we dishonor God and hurt ourselves and others when we allow our lives to become unbalanced.

If, for example, we become workaholics willing to sacrifice our families to our own need to “achieve,” we not only rob people who deserve better of us, we deny a basic truth of the gospel. Our worth springs not from our own frantic effort to create it; it comes from our Creator. Because we’re God’s, we are already of immense value and deeply loved completely apart from anything we might ever achieve. If we believe God’s description of success,” we’ll work better when we work. But we’ll also play better when we play and rest better when we rest.

Along with our loud and frantic society, we avoid quietness for another deep reason: We’re terrified of it. To be quiet and still for long means we might have to take a hard look deep into our own souls. We might have to ask some questions about how much most of our frantic activity really matters and how much of real value we’re receiving from the way we’re selling the moments of our lives.

So I wonder. What would it take for most of us to be willing to spend more time in quiet stillness?

I know what it took for Louis Zamperini. Louie was an Olympic runner whose bid for a second Olympics was cut short by World War II. In her fascinating book Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand follows Louie from his early life as quite a rascal, to the Olympics as a world-class runner, to World War II as a B-24 bombardier, through his hair-raising experiences in the air, and even more amazing, as a survivor of almost two months in a life raft in the Pacific following the downing of his plane, and later, as a POW held by the Japanese.

More than a few downed crewmen adrift in rafts had been reduced to madness, but betwixt moments of horror, Louie found a surprising clarity of mind. Hillenbrand writes that Louie “had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence,” he found that “his mind was quick and clear, his imagination unfettered and supple.” He could “stay with a thought for hours, turning it about.”

Some gifts God can give us only through quiet stillness. May we be wise enough and disciplined enough to put ourselves in positions to receive them—without having to suffer a crash beforehand.




Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

"Peace, Be Still!" And the Sooner the Better!

I wish the wind would let up. I don’t like it.

I can deal fairly well with hot or cold, rain or shine, and just about as many varieties of weather as you care to mention. (Okay, I admit that I don’t care for swamp weather: 90-plus degrees and 90-plus humidity. Given the choice, I’d much prefer a blizzard.)

But, generally speaking, you can usually find a way to cool down or warm up. I’m almost always thankful for rain, and I absolutely love snow. Nothing is more beautiful than a blanket of white, especially if you’re looking at it through a window and sitting in your recliner by the fireplace drinking coffee and reading a good book. The only way that picture could get better is if you have a granddaughter or two in your lap.

But wind’s a different deal. Whether it’s being produced by La Nina, El Nino, or butterfly wings in Canada, I don’t care. I just don’t like it. The less we have of it, the better.

I admit that my opinion is colored. When my wife and I spent some time in East Texas last spring, it was kinda windy. But I learned something. I discovered that wind that is not brown is much less objectionable than wind that is brown, gritty, and completely annoying. I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that wind could actually blow and not move a good bit of acreage around with it. Clear wind is better than brown wind.

But no wind is best of all.

By the way, was there wind in the Garden of Eden before the human tenants besmirched Paradise? I doubt it. Cool, gentle breezes, yes. Wind and dust storms, no.

I don’t need or much appreciate the wind’s loud and obnoxious in-your-face reminder that we live in a fallen, windswept world, a world often oppressed by gale-force wind-waves of suffering and heartache, trouble and trial. People get hurt here, and I’m plenty aware of that without needing to watch West Texas blow by my window.

As I write, it’s a couple of days before Thanksgiving. I’m sitting out in my shed, man-cave, sermon-factory, computer in lap, listening to the wind howl and expecting to see my little dog fly past the window and get stuck in a tree any minute. Less wind would make it seem a lot more “Thanksgiving-y.”

But then I remember H. W. Westermayer’s comment that “the pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts . . . nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.”

And I remember the Apostle Paul’s always-challenging words: “Give thanks in all circumstances.”

I’m working on it.

Still, one of my favorite pictures of the Lord is when he stood in that boat on wind-swept Galilee and calmly told the wind to shut up and shut down. We have it on good authority—His!—that one day he’ll do it again, and every wind of pain will be forever stilled. That hope is itself a great reason to give thanks.

 Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Thank God for Those Who Beautifully Color Our World

Like most folks who were alive at the time, I remember exactly where I was when we got the news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. I was just six years old, but I remember.

Like most of you, I remember where I was and what I was doing when on September 11, 2001, the pictures started streaming across our television screens of those planes slamming into the Twin Towers.

And though I know most of the world can’t be expected to know or remember where they were on last Saturday morning, it was at around 9:00 that morning when I got word of June Conway’s passing, and I will always remember it vividly. I was standing on the second floor walkway getting ready to come down the stairs of a motel at Fredericksburg, Texas, and my cell phone rang, and it was June’s husband, Wes, with the news.

The Sunday morning after we got home was strange. It was all the more strange because so many things about it seemed normal. And it was stranger still to realize that most of the world didn’t even know the world had changed.

The sun came up that morning just as usual. It started for me early as most Sundays do. I groaned at the sound of the alarm, rolled out of bed, and headed for the shower as usual.

I admit that what happened in the quiet solitude of the shower was pretty unusual. Much more saltwater than usual washed from my eyes and mingled with the rinse water and gurgled down the drain. I doubt it hurt anything. Tears are not toxic waste; they are precious.

I dressed and headed to McDonald’s as usual. Ordered at the “drive thru” as usual. Raised my hand in a wave to the faithful group of Sunday morning coffee-drinking insomniacs as usual. Opened up the church door, turned on the lights, headed to my study. All as usual.

You’d almost think that the whole world hadn’t changed.

But it did change.

It wasn’t because a world leader was assassinated. It wasn’t because an event as cowardly and shameful as it was terrible had rocked the world again.

The world had changed for me, and for others like me, because one dear unassuming, gentle, humble, winsome, loving and lovely lady who had always been part of my life was suddenly gone. For my family, for my church family, and for all who knew her, June was one who best showed us God’s unconditional love and when she filled our lives with her encouragement, we knew without doubt that it came through her from Above. Her hugs were God’s hugs.

Maybe it’s good for us all to be reminded that it’s not at all necessary to be great and powerful to be truly great in showing God’s love. Sometimes just a really good hug will get the job done—and maybe even color somebody’s world beautifully.





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

"Do You Want Your Church to Grow Spiritually?"

DO YOU WANT YOUR CHURCH TO GROW SPIRITUALLY?” queried an item in my e-mail in-box today.

I can be a little contrarian, and since the only option given for me to click on was a “Yes,” my first reaction was, “No, not really, but thanks.”

Well, duh! Aside from the fact that it’s God’s church and not mine, what pastor would not like the church he serves to grow spiritually?

Of course, all church leaders would answer the question, “Yes!” But for more than a few, the honest answer would be, “Well, spiritual growth would be good, but what I really want most is for my church to be really, really large!” Most respondents wouldn’t say that. They’d do a much better job baptizing their kingdom-building, so that no one—not even them—could be sure whose kingdom, theirs or God’s, they most want to grow. By the deft use of religious lingo and slippery reasoning, they would easily convince themselves that physical growth and spiritual growth go completely hand in hand and that numerical growth is a sign probably of spiritual growth and certainly of God’s blessing.

The Apostle Paul warned long ago that those who are greedy for money “pierce themselves with many griefs.” Healthy churches come in all sizes, but when church leaders become so greedy for numbers that they’ll run their poor sheep through any hoop, and when they forget that sheep have faces and are not just a flock to fleece, they do indeed “pierce themselves” and those in their care with “many griefs.”

I wonder how many young pastors have gone off to the latest church growth seminar, bought a program from someone marketing what Eugene Peterson (in his book Under the Unpredictable Plant) calls “spiritual monkey glands” to toss into the pot, mix properly in the caldron with all the other recommended ingredients, and produce enormous growth—and end up poisoning the flock or running their poor sheep into the ground? If it sounds more like an idolatrous mixture of witchcraft and today’s “success” dogma than real spirituality, well, there’s a reason for that.

The cross, as Peterson notes, is “conspicuously absent” and real community and genuine relationships are devalued. All in the name of “growth.” As Peterson warns, instead of God’s Spirit working on large numbers as Peter preaches about Christ, what we get is a multitude dancing around a golden calf built by a religious consumer marketer ahead of his time named Aaron.

The ad insists that with their product spiritual growth is “simple.” Forgive me if I doubt that and opt to skip the slick video. Spiritual growth has never been simple or easy. But I can already name some of the ingredients. Prayer. Time in God’s word. Non-glitzy, unselfish Christ-centered cross-centered living. And that means sacrifice. And that means even suffering.

Their plan, they say, is based on “who YOU are.” God’s plan is based on who HE is.



Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Question: Where's Your Place at the Table?

I want to ask you a question: Where’s your place at the table?

You’ve got one, don’t you? I don’t mean a table; I mean, a place. I’m almost certain that you do.

There’s a place at your dining room table that’s your place. It’s not that you can’t physically sit somewhere else at that table.

It’s your table.

Those are your chairs.

You can sit wherever you want to.

But you know as well as I do that not every place at that table, your table, and on those chairs, your chairs, is your place.

Sit in the wrong place and it just feels, well, wrong.

It feels like buttoning a shirt with the buttons on the wrong side.

It feels like trying to brush your teeth left-handed if you’re right-handed, or vice versa.

It feels like putting your shoes on right shoe first instead of left shoe first, or vice versa.

It’ll work, I guess, but it just feels wrong.

You’ve got a place at the table. And it’s your place. It’s where you’re supposed to be, and it just feels right, your place at the table.

But what happens if somebody else in the family decides that their own place at the table is the wrong place? And they want to switch places? And, what’s more, without asking a soul, they just move?

Then everyone else becomes more or less “dis-placed” and probably a tad disgruntled.

Or imagine another situation. It’s an empty place at the table. It’s always been filled before, but today it’s empty. Ah, that’s displacement of a far worse sort.

In Mark 9, Jesus and his disciples have just come home to Capernaum. Lots has happened in the last few days. Jesus has taken Peter, James, and John, up a “high mountain” where he was “transfigured” before them. They’re still trying to wrap their minds around that.

Meanwhile, back down the hill, the other disciples have been fussing with the Pharisees (or at least, the “teachers of the law”) and have failed spectacularly in Demon Removal 101. Jesus has cleaned up the mess, defeated the devil, and taught his disciples that it’s a really good thing to consider praying before battling the Prince of Darkness.

Then, as if all this wasn’t enough, on the surreptitious, under-the-radar trip home, he begins to talk to his disciples in earnest about his coming death and resurrection.

Busy time. Mind-boggling time.

They walk exhausted into the house at Capernaum, and a query from Christ calls them on the carpet: “What were you arguing about on the road?”

They stop in their tracks. Study their sandals. Hem and haw and start to stutter. But their jaws are shame-locked.

Jesus already knows. He knows they were arguing about who was the greatest. And he simply tells them, “The one who wants to be first must be the very last, the servant of all.”

Forget the jockeying for better places at the table. One place is about to be empty.

The Greatest of all will have left the table to serve us all.


 Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

How Many Pastors Does It Take to Change a Water Heater?

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Though I love my usual “neighborhood,” it was nice to wake up today in another one: Robert Lee, Texas. It’s the Semiannual Pastors of the Shelburne Variety Robert Lee Ministry Conference which I’ve been religiously attending now for thirty years or so. It’s by far the most inspiring ministry conference I’ve ever attended.

Actually, it’s the semiannual convergence in Coke County of my three minister brothers and myself at our Granddaddy & Grandmother Key’s old homeplace in Robert Lee. Lots of fun, it’s worth a ton in relaxation, pure enjoyment, and some fine opportunities for bouncing ministerial ideas, problems, and general ruminations off the graying heads of three other brother clerics all coveyed up for a few days of retreat.

I rolled in late last evening, glad to have seen only one deer in the forty miles between Colorado City and Robert Lee. It was a reverse record. My brother Jim set the record last year by spotting fifty deer along that same stretch of highway, some of whom seemed suicidal. “Terrorist deer,” storyteller Garrison Keillor calls them. Deer ready and willing to commit suicidal mayhem. Only one last night. And not of the terroristic variety.

Jim and I spent a couple of hours solving world problems and then headed to bed, both glad that the pre-tripulation (before the trip tribulation) work flurry was over and we’d actually landed in Robert Lee.

When my head hit the pillow, I was hoping to sink into blissful oblivion; instead, I launched into a nightmare sort of hodge-podge of worship services gone terribly wrong and a few other church-type afflictions. I don’t know what to make of that. Probably nothing. Thank the Lord, fiction is stranger than truth.

I doubt it’s all that unusual for a tired plumber taking some time off to spend the first night or two tossing and turning with visions of gushing pipes or under-the-sink drips drip-drip-dripping all night long on his nose in a kind of subliminal waterboarding.

It’s funny. I love what I do and can hardly imagine doing anything else. But a few days away is a good thing. The Lord knew what he was talking about when he built in, right from the first, some time for rest and even made a commandment out of it, hoping to force his frenetic kids to seek some kind of balance in our all-too-often unbalanced lives.

Anyway, I’m going to avoid chili dogs this evening before retiring to what I have every hope will be peaceful slumber.

Uh oh. Jim just discovered that the old abode’s old water heater seems incontinent. Not a good sign. Pastoral plumbing will be required. More tribulation. Even here. Jesus predicted it. But he also said, “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

Now, how many pastors does it take to change a water heater?





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Thank God for His Beautiful Green Earth

I’m afraid I’ve discovered that I’m not very “Green.”

Whenever we fall to self-righteousness, we are religious about it, but overtly religious people have in no way cornered the market. Chest-thumping of any sort is every bit as effective as Bible-thumping if you want to be a self-righteous jerk. All you need is one or two areas in life where you have convinced yourself that you are a cut above the masses, and you’re well on your way.

I’ve always been pretty partial to green as a color, but I don’t care for it much as a political perspective. It seems off-color. Nauseatingly politically correct. Rife with self-righteousness. Long on hoopla and short on substance. Loud but shallow. Shot through with the kind of deadly sanctimony that always ends up looking silly, fallen in on itself due to the weight of its own pomposity. (Its most serious disciples make me think of dour-faced guppies holding meetings about how to save the ocean which neither knows about, cares about, or needs their help.) The most devoted Green folks display a fervor once reserved for religious experience and seem almost intoxicated by the new truths they have seen and discovered.

Discovered? New? It’s as if they have suddenly set foot on a new continent and planted a flag of bold discovery. Columbus’ discoveries in America were news in Europe in the late fifteenth century, and we can still work up some excitement on Columbus Day once a year, but the whole thing kind of got over being new news a good while back.

I hope we never forget the lessons we learned during WWII, but if I prance around today carrying a sign proclaiming, “Germany Surrenders!” I needn’t think it strange that some might think me strange.

Those who best honor God as the Creator have always been those with eyes most open to the beauty of his creation. The best stewards of God’s good earth have never been those marching on Washington or Rome or Paris demanding Greenness, they’ve been those quietly tilling the soil and taking care of the land for generations knowing that God has used it to take care of them. They were Green a long time before it was cool.

It’s wise to worship and honor God, and, if you do so well, the earth will get her due. But if you worship the earth, it seems to me that both God and the planet end up short-changed. (I like holidays, but Earth Day has always just seemed a tad on the pagan side.)

It is, of course, easy to see why “greenness” as a religion would be appealing. The earth, being impersonal, can’t ask or require a thing of the beings who worship it. Neither can it truly love us, no matter how much we love it.

The best reason for loving the earth is that, even fallen, it still reflects the beauty of its Creator. I love this good earth and care for it best when I love its Creator far more.

Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Cemeteries Help Keep Life in Proper Perspective

I’m weird, and I know it. But I sort of enjoy spending some time in cemeteries. I’m talking, of course, about the times when I want to be there, not the times when I have to be. Big difference. There’s been way too much of the latter recently, it seems to me.

But I find cemeteries peaceful and interesting. Strolling among the tombstones (since I don’t have to mow around them, I much prefer the standing ones), you get the chance to play Sherlock Holmes and deduce all sorts of life stories from all sorts of inscriptions.

Some cemeteries are quite beautiful with well-kept shrubs and trees and grass. And, if I may say so, the folks who populate cemeteries tend to be incredibly easy to get along with.

Since I’ve been a pastor in my community for over twenty-five years, more than a few of the names I see on the stones in our area cemeteries are connected with lives and stories that I know. I stood at the heads of quite a few of those graves and spoke words I hoped would point to the Author of Life just before the earth’s blanket was rolled over those remains.

When I think of my life and the life of our community, it’s hard for me to visualize life without many of the folks I’ve just mentioned. I no longer bump into them at worship or at the coffee shop or wave at them as we pass on the street. I miss that.

But they are still very much a part of me. A part of us. And that’s especially true if they were part of the community of faith. They may or may not have been part of my congregation or my denomination, but so what? Christ’s church is so much larger than the fences we build to try to keep God all tied up and tamed. Thank God indeed, God won’t be shut up in anybody’s box, and he has never been willing to be successfully tamed.

Death is the harshest reminder of all that we’ll never get even this world tamed, much less its Creator. We may not look long upon those boxes that we bury, but they are nonetheless a constant reminder that life can’t be successfully controlled.

Cemeteries help put our lives in perspective. The “drop dead” date for filing federal taxes is almost upon us. (Yes, I was that late this year.) But dead people care not at all. Life’s cost is almost certainly increasing at a steadier clip than your paycheck, but once your heart stops the meter quits running, too. Perspective.

Cemeteries help us divide what really matters from what really does not. What matters most is who we chose to ultimately trust in this life—ourselves or our Creator. That’s a serious decision.

But once that decision’s made, cemeteries also remind us that life is far too precious to be taken too seriously. God is the God of all joy. Those who love him can dance in his presence both here and hereafter. They know better than to think that love and laughter and beauty cease on the other side of the tombstone.


 Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

"You Must Read and Understand These Instructions"

I just bought a new weed-eater. The old one was sputtering along just fine in excellent two-cycle engine form, but two of my sons have just moved into a different house and needed weed-whacking equipment. In a gesture of paternal magnanimity, I donated the old weed-destroyer to the cause. I didn’t tell them that it will likely out-value anything else left in the estate for them when I’ve departed. But they seemed appreciative.

Anyway, I ceremonially handed over the old weed-eater and straightway departed (in a less final sense) to procure a new one. The shopping trip was like all my shopping trips. I wasted gas going to four stores to save money and ended up back at the first store lined up to pay twice as much as I thought the item would cost. Oh, well.

When I got my shiny new weed-whacker home, I was tempted to fire it up just to check out the brand new thimble-sized engine, but it was midnight. And I’d given my (mixed) gas can away, too, and couldn’t buy a new one and get the petrol cocktail mixed up (shaken, not stirred) until Monday. That gave me time to sit the new machine in the living room floor for the weekend and actually look through the instructions.

Once I’d trimmed the two manuals down to the King’s English only, I was left with eighty-four pages of weed-eater literature. Actually, only twenty-six pages of that counted as “instructions.” The lion’s share was the “safety manual.” This is evidently a vicious machine.

Of course, there was very little plot to the two-volume novel. Most of the pages were covered with lawyer droppings. Safety booklets will soon come, no doubt, attached to every nail you buy at your local hardware store. It’s a wonder restaurants don’t include such manuals with their toothpicks.

But I read and learned . . .

The muffler is hot. Good.

The State of California (which knows so much more than other states, except how to balance budgets) knows that sucking in weed-eater exhaust can cause birth defects.

This thing could amputate my fingers. I’d have to be pretty determined to be fingerless, but it could happen.

It’s a bad idea to run it indoors, to use it to shorten power lines, or to operate it when drunk.

And so on.

I’m not finished reading yet, partly because reading these manuals, I’m warned, is not enough. I must “read and understand” all of these warnings. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to check off that last part.

The Maker of this world was kind enough to include a manual that we really should read and, yes, do our best to understand. He wrote it not to keep Heaven out of court, but to keep us out of trouble. But by far the main reason he wrote it was to point us not to the law but to the Savior.




Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Ideas, Good or Bad, Have Consequences

The amazing wordsmith G. K. Chesterton once observed that ideas (presumably, bad ones) can only be conquered by other ideas (presumably better ones), and, alas, “modern politicians have no ideas.”

Ain’t it the truth? And when they do flirt with an idea or two, they seem to latch onto only really bad ones.

I always enjoy the writing of Pulitzer prize-winning columnist George Will. In a recent column, Will pointed his readers to a fascinating book by Daniel Okrent entitled The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

It is ironic that Prohibition, which arose as an over-reaction to excessive and pernicious drinking, would itself be more legislatively excessive and lead to more pernicious consequences than anything it was designed to combat.

According to Okrent (and distilled by Will), among the unforeseen consequences of Prohibition were the income tax (since the federal government lost alcohol taxes which were 30% of its revenues), plea bargaining (since there was no way courts could actually try all the newly created criminals), a nationwide crime syndicate (folks as truly thankful as the most devout teetotaller for the new law—since it made organized crime filthy rich), Las Vegas (since once Prohibition was over ex-bootleggers needed “new business opportunities,”) NASCAR (since bootleggers needed hotter cars than the law’s), speedboats (same reason but on the water outrunning the Coast Guard), and a “privacy right” (“the right to be let alone”—“which eventually extended to abortion rights.” Not to mention, wealthy federal “Prohibition agents” who “cherished $1800 jobs because of the bribes that came with them.”

By the way, an interesting point in the book is that until the 18th Amendment (Prohibition), only one other amendment in the Constitution (prohibiting the owning of slaves) was designed to tell citizens what they could not do; all the other amendments told the government what it could not do. Government has not since gotten over the idea that it can do pretty much anything it wishes (even regulate trans fat and salt in restaurant fare!).

Alcohol consumption went down only 30% and freedom was held hostage in ways never envisioned by the many who truly thought Prohibition would go far to save the nation. It certainly went far.

If you think this is a column specifically about Prohibition, or teetotalism versus non-teetotalism, you are badly mistaken. It is a column about ideas and consequences. The former lead to the latter.

May God fill our little minds with good ideas so that into this needy world, good consequences follow to bring a little more peace and a little more joy. If we really want more of “God’s will” done “on earth as in heaven,” I think a very good idea is to trust God, and faith, and freedom, more than any law we might ever write ourselves.




Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Belated Birthday Congrats

Hey, folks--On a serious note, I woke up this morning and realized that I’d blown right past an important birthday!

I can hardly believe that nobody in this fine group mentioned it! Bilbo & Frodo Baggins’ birthday is usually celebrated on Sept 22, though there is some discussion regarding the actual date. But the American Tolkien Society has kindly designated the whole week that includes Sept 22 as Tolkien Week, so it’s not too late to celebrate! (Of course, it’s never too late to celebrate. Anything.)

From Wikipedia: The American Tolkien Society first proclaimed Hobbit Day and Tolkien Week in 1978, and defines them as this: "Tolkien Week is observed as the calendar week containing September 22, which is always observed as Hobbit Day", but acknowledges that Hobbit Day pre-dates their designation. Due to the discrepancies between the Shire Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar there is some debate for when to celebrate Hobbit Day. Many celebrate on September 22 of the Gregorian Calendar but other deep students of Tolkien, however, say that the dates mentioned in the narrative refer to the Shire Calendar, which has significant divergences from the Gregorian. More accurately, Tolkien said that the Shire Calendar is in advance by some 10 days (depending on the month) of the Gregorian Calendar. According to calculations, a suggested corresponding date is September 14."

And Bilbo’s was surely the best birthday speech ever! “First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits.” Tremendous outburst of approval. “I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” This was unexpected and rather difficult. There was some scattered clapping, but most of them were trying to work it out and see if it came to a compliment.”

Anyway, in a world where we often take idiocy seriously and the truly serious with far too little mirth, may I say, Long live Bilbo and Frodo, and God bless J. R. R. Tolkien! It’s a better world because a man of faith like Tolkien lived, breathed, wrote, and created an amazingly fine world filled with hobbits! We’d all be better off if we spent more time with them!

Need Information? Just Google It!

It boggles my mind to wonder how I ever got by without Google.

Every day, multiple times, I “google” some word or phrase looking for a trickle of the amazing flood of information available on the Internet.

I chomp down on a Tootsie Roll Pop late one evening and pop off a dental crown. What to do before the dental office opens? Google it!

My little dog looks guilty. The physical evidence indicates that she’s made a Christmas meal out of M & M stocking stuffers. I know chocolate is bad for dogs, but just how much does it take to fritz Rover? Google it! Turns out the dog would have to really chow down to be dispatched by M & Ms. (So my feeding handfuls of them to the Great Dane was just in vain.)

My motorcycle turn signals start going crazy. I push the button for two turn signal lights (front and rear) to blink, and all four light up the bike. Weird blinking. Looks like a fibrillating Christmas tree.

Motorcycle repair shops don’t like electrical problems. I don’t like paying motorcycle repair shops to deal with electrical problems. My answer?

Google! I got a whole short course in motorcycle wiring and how to attempt to read an electrical schematic. I found out what a turn signal switch or relay would cost. (Way too much, like everything labelled “motorcycle.”) I found out what to check first, what kind of electrical connection cleaner to use, whether lithium grease is electrically conductive, various options on removing a very stuck bolt, etc. I googled all that. And then started playing with wires until it was fixed.

I’ve googled info on home remedies for human physical maladies. I’ve googled up stuff on plant maladies to see why my orchids and plumeria look healthy but won’t bloom. I’ve googled info on a number of DIY projects from building a PVC flute to finding the best 21-degree roundhead framing nails to use in a nail gun when building shed trusses. I even googled, and found, the information I needed on how to “whip” the ends of a large rope for my granddaughters’ tree swing. (Just call me. I’ll show you how to whip up some sail-maker’s rope whipping. It’s fun.) And I googled up some info on the best knots to use for that swing. Fascinating!

Looking for a good sermon illustration or a great website filled with Bible study helps? Google it! I’ve just about gotten to the point that I can’t write a sermon without the Internet up and running so I can easily compare various Bible translations, etc.

So . . . if Google is such a help in finding information on “how to” build or do or fix just about everything, I wonder . . . I wonder why the Creator of the universe didn’t provide us with a treasure trove of information on, say, who to trust as we build our lives?

Oh, wait. He did! Maybe I need to “Bible” at least as much as I google!



Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

When God Posts a Warning, It Pays to Pay Attention

It had to be a government production, the sign I saw. Only a glassy-eyed bean-counting bureaucrat with common sense completely and laboriously expunged by years of mind-numbing training could have produced it. (Your tax dollars at work.)

Posted above a busy tramway, the sign proclaimed in large letters: TOUCHING WIRES CAUSES INSTANT DEATH. Good information, that.

But then in smaller letters was posted this message: “$200 Fine.”

Well, fine indeed. But I’m not exactly sure what to make of that.

I’m always as willing as the next guy to avoid shelling out two hundred bucks, but if paying up is presented as the alternative to sudden and gruesome death, I’d likely shell out a couple of C-notes.

Does the second warning belie the truth of the first? “Touch these wires, moron, and you’ll surely be quick-fried to a crackly crunch!” But maybe not. In which case, you’ll be fined, and that’ll teach you!

Or maybe there’s no contradiction at all. Maybe the long arm of the bureaucracy involved will reach right past death. The dead dumbo, smoky and smelling a lot like an electrical fire, finds himself waiting almost eternally (in a long line, no doubt) in front of a desk in the afterlife. He waits forever to file the forms in triplicate needed to remove the $200 lien on his account that’s got his posthumous processing locked up in limbo.

I’m not sure I get it. The sign’s message, I mean.

But I AM sure I won’t be touching tramway wires if I should happen to run across any. I don’t like the sound of that stiff fine.

Some governmental signs and warnings can be a bit baffling. But it occurs to me that when God gives a warning, we do well to pay very close attention. Some things that we touch will hurt us worse than even an electrified tramway wire.

Touch adultery, God warns us, and you will get scorched. Count on it.

Grab on to greed, and you’ll end up with some awfully bad burns. You can be sure of that.

Grasp bitterness, and embrace an unforgiving and critical spirit, and it won’t matter at all that you have been so mistreated and have such a very good excuse for being bitter: you’ll end up twisted and alone.

Grip such tempting wires, and so many more like them, long enough, and your soul will die, fatally scorched. And, yes, we do well to be wary of eternal death, but the sad fact is that if we choose to play with that which is deadly and embrace hellish attitudes right now, we can easily create a hell for ourselves a long time before we die. The fine inherent in such offenses is dreadfully high.

When God posts a warning, it pays to pay attention.





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Nice Pharisees Can Be the Most Dangerous of All

We need to ponder long and often the particularly fascinating truth that our Lord Jesus was the sinless “friend of sinners.”

“Sinners in denial,” Pharisees past and present, are seriously bothered by that. “Confessed sinners,” past and present, who know they fall terribly short, love him deeply for it.

Only two types of people exist: confessed sinners and sinners in denial. The former know they need mercy and thus react to others with mercy; the latter, the opposite.

Not all Pharisees mean to be bad people. That does not change the fact that even the nicest ones are a constant danger to themselves and others. Far too nice to ever put it this way, they are beset by two foundational beliefs: 1) I fall short in lots of ways, but the ways I fall short are better than the ways you fall short; 2) If you would just try a little harder, you could be almost as successful as I am in meeting God’s standards.

Looking around, they see in our world an appalling lack of regard for God’s (and their own) standards. What makes their view so tempting is the fact that our society does indeed exhibit a flagrant disregard for God’s standards. What they have a harder time seeing is that so do we all, some in ways not as obvious as others. The best of us needs God’s grace as badly as the worst.

It’s one thing to be one of those moral chameleons this world has in plenty who don’t see anything as right or wrong and can rationalize any attitude or action. It’s another—at least as bad and hurtful—to be so unable to sympathize with human weakness that we paint the whole world as black and white with little gray at all, and, by the way, almost no warmth or color. Law is always cold as stone; only hearts hold real warmth.

Into our world comes the only perfect person who ever lived, and how does he deal with terribly fallen humanity?

At a well in Samaria he holds out hope for a gal who is a five-time marital “loser” and “shacked up” with a guy at the time.

He saves a woman “caught in adultery” lying in the dust at the feet of Pharisees.

He brings new life to a sawed-off lying cheat of a tax collector named Zacchaeus.

How would nice “righteous” folks deal with such people today? Not like Jesus did. Penance or probation would likely be involved. Head-shaking would abound. We’d call a meeting and opine, “As much as we’d like to show mercy, and as much as we believe in grace, if we’re too loose, too lenient, we’ll be sending a message we just can’t afford to send.” What makes such unfailingly black and white folks so dangerous is that, not having suffered enough, failed enough, themselves, they honestly don’t see how they can follow any other course. Such brittle “grace” is no grace at all.

With good intentions, they forget how precious a price was paid for sin, that they didn’t pay it, and that they’re as spiritually needy as the neediest person they ever met. And “they” is, all too often, “we.” And me.

Christ’s suffering paid the price for sin. Until we’ve been broken enough to see our own deep need, we’ll neither fully accept his sacrifice for ourselves or be willing to share the gift of the sinless “friend of sinners” with others.






Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

"For Everything There Is a Season . . ."

I love seasons. And I’m thankful indeed to live in a place where we really have them.

I like summer, though it is not my favorite. The best thing about summer, I think, is that since kids and teachers have at least a few weeks off, life even for the rest of us tends to take on a little less harried and hurried hue. The shrill voices of the bean counters pushing “year round school” a decade or two ago have fallen blissfully silent. Not all of the most important education kids receive happens in school. Summer helps keep things in perspective.

Speaking of school, the school calendar and the seasons are a tad in conflict. The fall semester begins in summer and the spring term begins in the dead of winter. But it’s funny that in my part of the world, nature seems to pay undue attention to the school calendar. School starts and nature often flips the autumn switch a month early. Mornings become cooler, cool fronts begin showing up, morning fog becomes pretty common, and, I’m thankful to say, grass slows its growth and yard slaves begin to live in hope of fall’s freedom.

I love the cooler respite autumn provides. One of the best things about summer is the opportunity to work with the Lord in growing some of his beautiful plants and flowers. In summer’s harshest heat, scorching and parching are dangers. But autumn comes along and the plants you’ve been sweating over all summer get a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, strut their stuff, and do more than just cling to life. Come to think of it, now that the old grass is slowing down, we’re heading into a great time to get some new grass started in some bare patches. Sometimes I think fall is my favorite season.

But then comes winter, and that means fireplaces and hot tea and sweaters and snow and Christmas. In rare moments when I’m sitting by the fire with a good book and snow is falling outside, I tend to think winter is my favorite season.

Spring is all about new life. How can you not like spring? But spring here means wind, and any season with lots of wind with dirt in it has a good bit to overcome in my book. But some green starting to poke through dead stuff is still exciting.

Yeah, I like seasons. The wise man was right: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” God spins this world, whirls it around the sun, and amazing things happen. The same God gives us life and leads us through it, and each stage and season of our lives has its own challenges but also its own enthralling beauty. Yes, life comes with some occasional dust storms. You hang on and pray for strength to ride out the ugliness. But God’s gift of life also comes with breath-taking beauty. The summer of life brings kids and the autumn of life brings grandkids.

I love the seasons.





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Christian Ministry in the Future Which Is Now

On my desk for months has been a little book I’ve finally opened. It has been eye-opening.

In the Name of Jesus was written by priest, professor, and writer Henri Nouwen and includes his “Reflections on Christian Leadership.” Originally published in 1989, the book was Nouwen’s look ahead to Christian ministry in the twenty-first century.

Well, here we are. And the future is now.

When Nouwen wrote the book, he was in his fifties, and his ministry was undergoing serious change. For two decades, he had been teaching and writing at the Menninger Institute, Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. He was very well-known. In 2003, seven years after his death, a survey named him as the first choice of authors for Catholic and mainline Protestant clergy.

But after all his success, Nouwen found himself feeling empty. In a “very dark place” in his life, he began to realize that ‘burnout’ was a convenient psychological translation for a spiritual death.”

At that point, he felt led to make a complete change, and he accepted the invitation to move from Harvard to the L’Arche “Daybreak” community for mentally handicapped people near Toronto, Canada, to serve as pastor.

From daily association with the brightest and most “upwardly mobile” of society Nouwen found himself daily ministering in very physical and “non-glitsy” ways to the weakest of the weak, the simplest of the simple, who could read none of his books nor understand his former lectures. The only thing that impressed them was love.

It’s a depressing time (1989) to be a pastor, Nouwen wrote, a time when increasingly people don’t feel a need for God, the church, and a minister. Ministers see little real change, attendance is down, apathy is on the rise. For care, folks look more to psychologists, counselors, doctors, often seeking a “do it yourself” fix in which God and spirituality enter in not at all. Nouwen thought it would get worse.

In an effort to be timely, he said the church and her ministers would face three temptations, the same basic temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness. Worship and prayer would be devalued and forced to bow to “relevance,” the “worth” of churches and ministers being based on their production of social services. Selfless leadership in ministry would give way to “self-made” stardom among rock-star “ministers.” And “leadership” would be seen as the right of the powerful rather than the example of shepherds being humbly led by the Chief Shepherd. Ouch.

But what would really matter? The “leader with outstretched hands,” “praying, vulnerable, and trusting,” who “chooses a life of downward mobility,” who knows that he is weaker than any to whom he ministers and that he needs worse than any to hear the word God speaks through him, “You are loved.”


 Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Tree Swing Plans and God's Plan for Love

Given the rare opportunity, I can go a long time without answering a phone of any kind and be just fine. In fact, one of the things I like about motorcycles is that talking on a phone on one is almost impossible and not recommended, unless you’ve installed a BlueTooth helmet connection to be able to be bothered on two wheels. Why?!

But my phone rang twice last night, and both times I was absolutely delighted. In fact, I’m still basking in the glow of those calls. I like calls from friends and family and, blessing of blessings, I LOVE calls from my granddaughters, and each of the little beauties called last night!

The conversation with three-year-old Brylan was the longest phone talk we’ve ever had. She chattered and chattered, and I understood about 73% of what she said, but I just loved being the person she was talking to. Among other things, we continued work on some plans for a tree swing we’ve got in mind. Her reaction to the whole project? “Let’s do it, PawPaw!”

And then just a couple of hours later, the phone rang, and little two-year-old Brenley was calling from her bathtub. That little sweetie walks around the house, I’m told, with her plastic toy cell phone on her ear saying, “Hi, PawPaw.” (Ah, God is good!) But this was Brenley in person on a real phone which Mom was doing a fine job keeping dry. Brenley had called to sing, Shayla told me. “Baby B,” as cousin Brylan has christened her, launched beautifully into “Jesus Loves Me.” Celine Dion has never done a finer job with any tune!

It’s funny. We all go through most of the same stages of life, but no matter how many folks have preceded us, we can’t really understand what we’ve been told about the stage we’re in until we’re living it. Proud grandparents abound, but before I was one, I couldn’t really understand.

It’s not just that grandparents become crazy people at the moment of their grandkids’ birth. God uses those little people to change our lives and teach us a precious truth we thought we knew already: real love doesn’t have to be earned.

Oh, yes, I see talent just oozing out of those girls’ pores, but I loved them before I saw it. I think they’ll achieve much and go far, but all they have to do for me to love them completely is just to “be.” I want them to know the joy of learning, growing, maturing, and being “productive,” but nothing they could ever produce, be it grades or honors or fortunes or Nobel prizes could ever cause me to love them more. Perfect love “casts out fear.” Perfectionism and performance-based “love” is riddled with it. What those girls do I want them to do joyfully out of love for God, knowing they are already people of great value completely secure in their Father’s love.

My job is to be sure a grandfather’s love helps them know that. Normally, I’m not high on committees or meetings, but Brylan and Brenley and I need to get our heads together on some tree swing plans.





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Who Do You Really Trust?

I’m not sure how far we should trust polls, but I wonder what the answer would be if anybody polled the American public on this question: With regard to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, who do you trust least—British Petroleum, the government, or the press? Rank them in order.”

I’m not in any way enamored with BP, but I’m pretty sure my own answer would be that I trust BP at least as much as I do the latter two entities. My hardest choice between those three would be the race for 2nd and 3rd Place between grandstanding politicians and an incredibly self-righteous press.

This is old news now (over a week old) but the New York Times was reporting the government announcement that three-quarters of the spewed-out oil has “already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated—and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.”

Nobody is saying that the spill hasn’t been a mess whose environmental, economic, and personal harm hasn’t already been horrendous. But, if this latest governmental assessment is true, it sounds like pretty good news—such good news that I’m surprised the media, which doesn’t like good news, would even report it. Surely they’ll “balance” it with a lot more questions and dire predictions from all sorts of “experts.” The oil may have stopped spewing but we can be sure that the experts will continue to spout for years to come. And we’ll all still want lots of oil, so I doubt any of us can afford much hypocritical hand-wringing.

And how does BP come out of this? Since I’m not one of their officers, employees, or stockholders, I’m afraid I’ll not lose too much sleep over it. But it will be interesting to see.

And I still wonder about the truth behind the mess. Was BP woefully and even criminally negligent, negligence that cost precious lives and lit the fuse for a major disaster? Or was this truly a tragic “accident”? (Those with a stake in the “blame game” can never afford to use that word.) Did BP violate some governmental regulations before the spill? I’m certain they did. Because of greed and recklessness? Or because government regulations in any such endeavor metastasize at such a rate that no one could possibly keep them all? (I don’t know, but look at the IRS code, take your taxes to three different preparers, and wait to receive three different “answers.” Or call the IRS for an answer, talk to three different bureaucrats, and I’ll betcha you’ll get three different answers more often than not.)

So where does the truth lie in all of this? I really don’t know. But I wonder.

The deeper question is this: Who do you really trust? Come to think of it, that’s the deepest and most important question of life: who do you really trust?

Only one answer is good enough. And only one God is big enough.






Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.