I’m beginning to wonder if someone—maybe Someone—is trying to tell me something. Since my oldest granddaughter just turned 5 and I just turned 55, I suppose the good news is that I’m ripe for the message (poor metaphor). That’s also the bad news.
We might as well admit it: When it comes to this “aging” business, unless we’ve stopped aging (a serious situation), we’re all in the same boat. Better be seriously careful about looking down on old people; in ten minutes or so, we’ll be them, be we presently 5 or 55.
Some birthdays grab our attention a bit more than others. A good friend turned 65 three days before I hit 55. He says that having nine exceptional grandkids eases the blow, and I already have enough grandkids—three of them and each of them obviously exactly of that “exceptional” variety—to be sure he’s right. Just yesterday another friend who recently blew past 60 candles confessed to me that he found that number a bit stark and sobering.
So . . . today I fire up my e-mail program, having put on my reading glasses and sitting here with an ice pack over my aching shoulder (dunno what I did), and I begin perusing the subject lines.
One promises, “Observations on Getting Older.”
Another quickly labels itself as an ad for “Social Security disability.” It’s of the e-mail type that claims to be IMPORTANT, proving conclusively that it’s not.
A third offers hope: “Win a High Tech Winter Beauty Makeover.” It assumes, I suppose, that anyone so rapidly approaching life’s winter might need a “makeover” on an emergency basis.
Still another also alludes to age, but its truth makes me smile: “Your Kids Are Becoming You, But Your Grandkids Are Perfect.” What it doesn’t say is that my kids, who’ve always thought I was old, also think that I’m getting younger (as in, “more childish”) all the time, inexplicably shedding the kind of sedate maturity they’d always expected.
Ah, but the e-mail subject line that really got me this morning was this one: “Consumer Reports Health: Curtis, Time Is Running Out On Your Free Gift—Offer Expires Soon.” Just quickly scanning, my eye at first conveyed to my brain only a few words: my name, “Health,” “Time Is Running Out,” and “Expires Soon.”
Well, time is running, for sure. And, in view of eternity, we’re all “expiring soon,” whether we lay it down in the next 90 seconds or in 90 years. Whatever time we have left, here’s a prayer that we allow our Father to use it to help us look more like Him—to love more, laugh more, fill up more on his mercy and grace, and, with deep joy, live into his Joy Eternal.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
The God of All Beauty and Joy Will Have the Last Word
I began writing this particular column a week ago. The wind had been howling all day long.
Someone has said that nothing in nature is more beautiful than gently falling snow and the pristine glittering blanket it creates. I agree. But if that’s on one end of beauty’s scale, a wind-begotten brown dust-storm is on the other.
I dislike intense wind intensely. Or, to be more accurate, I despise dust-storms. I’m told that wind by itself, without dust and debris flying about in it, is much less objectionable. But if the wind blows here, it blows brown. Nasty. Maddening. Depressing. Disgusting. Soul-parching. Supply your own list of depressing adjectives.
On the night before that particular Monday’s particular onslaught of airborne particulate matter, a “weather-person” on one of our local TV channels promised “spring-like” weather. In New England that might be a different sort of promise, but I knew what it usually means here.
In some parts of the country, “spring” conjures up images of new life, verdant vegetation springing forth, the green guarantee of fruitful fertility. It does here, too. But here it also brings up images of new vegetation being sandblasted into dry death and early decay, innocent new blades of greenery poking their little heads up and then wishing they could dive back under the ground’s cover and dig back into the dirt to keep from being jerked up by their roots and cast dead into the brown stratosphere by gale-force winds.
“Spring-like.” The weather gal meant unseasonably warm. She also meant wind, wind, more wind, and blowing dirt.
A pox on “spring-like”! It’s January, for goodness’ sake! It’s barely been officially winter for a month and already we’re being attacked by “spring-like”! I’d prefer “winter-like” any day over the wind howling outside my door and the dirt piling up on the window-sill. Give me “12 degrees and calm”! Away with “70 degrees and brown”! We’ll get spring-like soon enough.
I’d already been thinking such dismal dust-driven thoughts a week before the Sunday that followed that Monday. That Sunday the wind hit in the middle of the night. Not good. Long before church time, acres of farmland had already taken to the air and were flying by. Caught by 60- mph winds, the front door of the church was pretty much ripped off its hinges. Why not? Coming unhinged in that mess seemed completely understandable.
But worship was warm anyway and surprisingly (to me) joyful even on that day. And, also surprising, that evening and the next morning were sunny and calm and still, beautiful by anyone’s reckoning.
Maybe there’s a parable here. In this fallen world, the winds of trouble and pain will blow, kicking up dust and suffering. We can count on that. But we can also count on our Father’s promise that “joy comes in the morning.” The God of all beauty and joy, who once told the wind where to get off as he said, “Peace, be still,” will have the last word.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Someone has said that nothing in nature is more beautiful than gently falling snow and the pristine glittering blanket it creates. I agree. But if that’s on one end of beauty’s scale, a wind-begotten brown dust-storm is on the other.
I dislike intense wind intensely. Or, to be more accurate, I despise dust-storms. I’m told that wind by itself, without dust and debris flying about in it, is much less objectionable. But if the wind blows here, it blows brown. Nasty. Maddening. Depressing. Disgusting. Soul-parching. Supply your own list of depressing adjectives.
On the night before that particular Monday’s particular onslaught of airborne particulate matter, a “weather-person” on one of our local TV channels promised “spring-like” weather. In New England that might be a different sort of promise, but I knew what it usually means here.
In some parts of the country, “spring” conjures up images of new life, verdant vegetation springing forth, the green guarantee of fruitful fertility. It does here, too. But here it also brings up images of new vegetation being sandblasted into dry death and early decay, innocent new blades of greenery poking their little heads up and then wishing they could dive back under the ground’s cover and dig back into the dirt to keep from being jerked up by their roots and cast dead into the brown stratosphere by gale-force winds.
“Spring-like.” The weather gal meant unseasonably warm. She also meant wind, wind, more wind, and blowing dirt.
A pox on “spring-like”! It’s January, for goodness’ sake! It’s barely been officially winter for a month and already we’re being attacked by “spring-like”! I’d prefer “winter-like” any day over the wind howling outside my door and the dirt piling up on the window-sill. Give me “12 degrees and calm”! Away with “70 degrees and brown”! We’ll get spring-like soon enough.
I’d already been thinking such dismal dust-driven thoughts a week before the Sunday that followed that Monday. That Sunday the wind hit in the middle of the night. Not good. Long before church time, acres of farmland had already taken to the air and were flying by. Caught by 60- mph winds, the front door of the church was pretty much ripped off its hinges. Why not? Coming unhinged in that mess seemed completely understandable.
But worship was warm anyway and surprisingly (to me) joyful even on that day. And, also surprising, that evening and the next morning were sunny and calm and still, beautiful by anyone’s reckoning.
Maybe there’s a parable here. In this fallen world, the winds of trouble and pain will blow, kicking up dust and suffering. We can count on that. But we can also count on our Father’s promise that “joy comes in the morning.” The God of all beauty and joy, who once told the wind where to get off as he said, “Peace, be still,” will have the last word.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Monday, January 16, 2012
"My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"
Of the three major events of Jesus’ life—Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter—only the Crucifixion took place completely out in the open for all the world to see. And when the four writers of the Gospels set forth their accounts of Jesus’ life, they devote one-third of their time to that most excruciating event in history when God the Son hung powerless, nailed in seemingly complete failure, to a Roman cross.
So writes Philip Yancey in his fine book Disappointment With God. The book is subtitled, “Three Questions No One Asks Aloud.”
Actually, the questions are often asked loudly by skeptics; thoughtful Christians also ask them but usually much more quietly and often with some serious and irrational guilt. (The psalmists regularly asked the very same questions, so I’m pretty sure God doesn’t mind when his people today do.)
In the book Yancey, who invariably asks the right questions, is asking why God, at the very times when we most need his presence and power in our lives, so often seems silent, or hidden, or unfair. Contrary to the “name it and claim it and don’t forget to send a big check” TV preachers and more than a few megalomaniacal mega-church gurus, God doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo promising health, wealth, success, and unbroken blessing for those who get the faith formula (involving a good bit more magic and manipulation than faith) just right.
Something really bad happens on the road to the unbroken success the “faith” gurus promise. You spin out, hit the wall, flame out, face failure, get broken. Then some paragon of plastic piety hits you with another of his many easy throw-down answers: If only your faith were stronger, it wouldn’t have happened. If you had real faith you wouldn’t be wondering why God seems at times silent, or hidden, or unfair. (So shame on you for wondering!)
I hope you don’t pay attention to such “gurus.” Even the Son hanging on the cross asked his Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (That it was a quotation from a psalm does not strip it of its poignant reality.)
We all like it best when God’s answer to our prayers seems obvious and impossible to miss. At the cross, we’d most definitely have opted for an army of 10,000 angels wiping out Christ’s enemies. Long before the cross, we’d have given in to every one of Satan’s temptations of Christ (Matthew 4) by focusing on flashy miracles, playing to the crowds, and worshiping power (see any of that in “religion” today?).
But Yancey is right: “The spectacle of the Cross, the most public event of Jesus’ life, reveals the vast difference between a god who proves himself through power and One who proves himself through love.”
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
So writes Philip Yancey in his fine book Disappointment With God. The book is subtitled, “Three Questions No One Asks Aloud.”
Actually, the questions are often asked loudly by skeptics; thoughtful Christians also ask them but usually much more quietly and often with some serious and irrational guilt. (The psalmists regularly asked the very same questions, so I’m pretty sure God doesn’t mind when his people today do.)
In the book Yancey, who invariably asks the right questions, is asking why God, at the very times when we most need his presence and power in our lives, so often seems silent, or hidden, or unfair. Contrary to the “name it and claim it and don’t forget to send a big check” TV preachers and more than a few megalomaniacal mega-church gurus, God doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo promising health, wealth, success, and unbroken blessing for those who get the faith formula (involving a good bit more magic and manipulation than faith) just right.
Something really bad happens on the road to the unbroken success the “faith” gurus promise. You spin out, hit the wall, flame out, face failure, get broken. Then some paragon of plastic piety hits you with another of his many easy throw-down answers: If only your faith were stronger, it wouldn’t have happened. If you had real faith you wouldn’t be wondering why God seems at times silent, or hidden, or unfair. (So shame on you for wondering!)
I hope you don’t pay attention to such “gurus.” Even the Son hanging on the cross asked his Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (That it was a quotation from a psalm does not strip it of its poignant reality.)
We all like it best when God’s answer to our prayers seems obvious and impossible to miss. At the cross, we’d most definitely have opted for an army of 10,000 angels wiping out Christ’s enemies. Long before the cross, we’d have given in to every one of Satan’s temptations of Christ (Matthew 4) by focusing on flashy miracles, playing to the crowds, and worshiping power (see any of that in “religion” today?).
But Yancey is right: “The spectacle of the Cross, the most public event of Jesus’ life, reveals the vast difference between a god who proves himself through power and One who proves himself through love.”
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Monday, January 9, 2012
"What Have You Learned From Your Failures?"
What have you learned from your successes and failures?”
That was the question the interviewer put to billionaire Donald Trump a few months ago during Trump’s brief (and, I personally hope, never to be revived) flirtation with presidential candidacy.
His answer: “I don’t see myself as having failures . . .”
I was so surprised by the answer that I may not have heard if he later tried to pull that bit of nonsense out of the ditch. Could any sane person fall into a failure more foolish or fatal than to claim to have no failures?
Two kinds of people draw breath in this world: those who are seriously weak and flawed and know it, and those who are seriously weak and flawed and don’t know it. We’re far better off being, and spending time with, the former. The latter are uncommonly tiresome, obnoxious, dangerous—and well-avoided.
Yes, we’re far better off belonging to the first group and being honest about it. But I suspect the only way that priceless knowledge can be bought is with some very costly pain. Until we’ve been hit “up the side of the head” pretty hard with one of the major bricks life sooner or later throws at us all, I doubt we can offer much real and condescension-less comfort to others who are also ordinary humans—which means at times concussed, bruised, bleeding.
Until we’ve shot ourselves in the foot and have been forced to learn that, though God’s children all dance, they also all walk with a limp, I doubt we have much valuable to offer those who want to join the dance.
We may talk a good game about grace, about how we’re all sinners in the same boat completely dependent upon God’s mercy. But until we’ve swallowed enough sea water to seem to be headed under for the last time, I doubt we can really open our hands to reach up for God’s hand or to reach out a hand to genuinely help others.
Until we’ve been aghast to find ourselves down in the depths, we deep down think in our heart of hearts, even if not aloud, that we or our group are a cut above the rest. God’s favorites. The blue birds in the class. At least a little bit gifted and talented morally. We blindly think that all we really need is a little more time to try harder, get things all figured out, and sharpen up our act.
Until we’ve been jolted into sanity by hitting bottom, we center on our problem with sins rather than our problem with Sin, worry more about outward acts than inward putrescence, focus on specks of sawdust in other folks’ eyes rather than planks in our own. We waste time gazing through the wrong end of the telescope. Nothing clears up the picture more quickly than hitting the wall with some obvious failure and living through the pain that follows. Then grace means something because it is real and precious. It has always been our only hope, but now we know it.
And then if someone asks us how we’ve dealt with failure, the answer will be worth hearing.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
That was the question the interviewer put to billionaire Donald Trump a few months ago during Trump’s brief (and, I personally hope, never to be revived) flirtation with presidential candidacy.
His answer: “I don’t see myself as having failures . . .”
I was so surprised by the answer that I may not have heard if he later tried to pull that bit of nonsense out of the ditch. Could any sane person fall into a failure more foolish or fatal than to claim to have no failures?
Two kinds of people draw breath in this world: those who are seriously weak and flawed and know it, and those who are seriously weak and flawed and don’t know it. We’re far better off being, and spending time with, the former. The latter are uncommonly tiresome, obnoxious, dangerous—and well-avoided.
Yes, we’re far better off belonging to the first group and being honest about it. But I suspect the only way that priceless knowledge can be bought is with some very costly pain. Until we’ve been hit “up the side of the head” pretty hard with one of the major bricks life sooner or later throws at us all, I doubt we can offer much real and condescension-less comfort to others who are also ordinary humans—which means at times concussed, bruised, bleeding.
Until we’ve shot ourselves in the foot and have been forced to learn that, though God’s children all dance, they also all walk with a limp, I doubt we have much valuable to offer those who want to join the dance.
We may talk a good game about grace, about how we’re all sinners in the same boat completely dependent upon God’s mercy. But until we’ve swallowed enough sea water to seem to be headed under for the last time, I doubt we can really open our hands to reach up for God’s hand or to reach out a hand to genuinely help others.
Until we’ve been aghast to find ourselves down in the depths, we deep down think in our heart of hearts, even if not aloud, that we or our group are a cut above the rest. God’s favorites. The blue birds in the class. At least a little bit gifted and talented morally. We blindly think that all we really need is a little more time to try harder, get things all figured out, and sharpen up our act.
Until we’ve been jolted into sanity by hitting bottom, we center on our problem with sins rather than our problem with Sin, worry more about outward acts than inward putrescence, focus on specks of sawdust in other folks’ eyes rather than planks in our own. We waste time gazing through the wrong end of the telescope. Nothing clears up the picture more quickly than hitting the wall with some obvious failure and living through the pain that follows. Then grace means something because it is real and precious. It has always been our only hope, but now we know it.
And then if someone asks us how we’ve dealt with failure, the answer will be worth hearing.
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Bethlehem Will Always Trump Times Square
We all know what time does, right? Tempus fugit! I learned that phrase long ago in one of the most practically valuable classes I’ve ever taken, the Latin class at Amarillo’s Sam Houston Junior High. Mister Craddock would be proud. Tempus (time) fugit (flies)!
As I write, we’re slipping into the wee hours of January 2, 2012. Years ago I tried some future-predicting based on a very little math (a very little math is the only kind I’ve ever done). I figured that I’d likely live to see this world roll on past 2000, but that I’d be very old—older than 40!—when it happened. It did, and I was. Over a decade ago.
Tempus fugit. In a little over two weeks my oldest granddaughter will be 5. In a little over a week, I’ll be 55. Brylan’s settled on a “Strawberry Shortcake” theme for her party. I’m leaning toward something from “The Lord of the Rings” for mine. I may go as Gandalf, the wise old good wizard. All I’ll need is white hair, a white beard, and a long staff. (Hmm. The mirror says all I’ll need is the staff.) If I hang a banner, it will boast this Scripture: “Now Barzillai was old and advanced in years” (2 Samuel 19:32).
I’m way short of the wisdom of a Barzillai or a Gandalf, but I find myself on this eighth day of Christmas doing what old guys do: musing. What a contrast between the two parties! Not Brylan’s and mine, but the one in Times Square and the one in Heaven.
It’s nice that they drop the big crystal ball in Times Square each new year, but to plot a wise course for the future, it’s good to remember that earthly crystal balls are mostly hollow, about as short of real substance as sparklers and confetti.
If you want substance, Bethlehem will always trump Times Square. Mankind messes with sparklers and glitz and trumped up resolutions, valuable only because they remind us yet again of how valueless is human resolve. God sends angels from the realms of glory trumpeting the good news of real salvation that comes completely from outside of ourselves, the birth of the Savior, God’s power doing for us what we could never do for ourselves.
I don’t know how long “tempus” (time) will go on “fugit-ing” (flying). But I’m sure of this: When Times Square has long since gone dark and the last sparkler of human resolve has fizzled, the real party in Heaven will just be gearing up, and God’s joy will still be wonderfully and forever ablaze.
That’s a party I don’t want to miss!
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
As I write, we’re slipping into the wee hours of January 2, 2012. Years ago I tried some future-predicting based on a very little math (a very little math is the only kind I’ve ever done). I figured that I’d likely live to see this world roll on past 2000, but that I’d be very old—older than 40!—when it happened. It did, and I was. Over a decade ago.
Tempus fugit. In a little over two weeks my oldest granddaughter will be 5. In a little over a week, I’ll be 55. Brylan’s settled on a “Strawberry Shortcake” theme for her party. I’m leaning toward something from “The Lord of the Rings” for mine. I may go as Gandalf, the wise old good wizard. All I’ll need is white hair, a white beard, and a long staff. (Hmm. The mirror says all I’ll need is the staff.) If I hang a banner, it will boast this Scripture: “Now Barzillai was old and advanced in years” (2 Samuel 19:32).
I’m way short of the wisdom of a Barzillai or a Gandalf, but I find myself on this eighth day of Christmas doing what old guys do: musing. What a contrast between the two parties! Not Brylan’s and mine, but the one in Times Square and the one in Heaven.
It’s nice that they drop the big crystal ball in Times Square each new year, but to plot a wise course for the future, it’s good to remember that earthly crystal balls are mostly hollow, about as short of real substance as sparklers and confetti.
If you want substance, Bethlehem will always trump Times Square. Mankind messes with sparklers and glitz and trumped up resolutions, valuable only because they remind us yet again of how valueless is human resolve. God sends angels from the realms of glory trumpeting the good news of real salvation that comes completely from outside of ourselves, the birth of the Savior, God’s power doing for us what we could never do for ourselves.
I don’t know how long “tempus” (time) will go on “fugit-ing” (flying). But I’m sure of this: When Times Square has long since gone dark and the last sparkler of human resolve has fizzled, the real party in Heaven will just be gearing up, and God’s joy will still be wonderfully and forever ablaze.
That’s a party I don’t want to miss!
Copyright 2012 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
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