Resurrection Hope in the Midst of Calamity

As most of our friends and parishioners know, my brothers and I, all four of us preachers, head to Robert Lee, Texas, a couple of times a year to spend some time together at the old homeplace of our maternal grandparents.

The other guys usually manage to get there, each alone, from one to a few additional times each year for study retreats, etc. I live a bit closer to Robert Lee than the others, which means, of course, that so far I have managed to get away for almost no time alone there ever. That is a shame, and it is my own fault.

Don’t get me wrong. We love the time together, but my brothers assure me that being there alone and drinking in some quiet time is worth a ton in its own right. I really enjoy the company of those miscreants, but I’ve always found myself to be excellent company by myself, too. I need to try it.

I call our biannual get-togethers the Coke County Ministry Conference. I’ve derived far more ministerial benefit from those gatherings than any actual ministry conference I’ve ever attended. We had a great time at the most recent one, even though we probably should have taken turns preaching sermons to each other warning of hell. We were there a bit later in the spring than usual; afternoon temperatures were already hovering obscenely around 100, and we were roasting. Add a little—actually, a lot—of wind to that, and it was seriously hot.

It was also dangerously dry. I didn’t see any brimstone, but the fire danger was extreme. A few days ago the chance of fire became the certainty of fire as a major wildfire threatened the towns of Robert Lee and Bronte. Some of our family there have had to leave their homes, and the guys have joined in to help try to get the blaze under control.

One report mentioned that the residents of the nursing home just across the creek from my grandparents’ old place has been evacuated. The fire has been very near Paint Creek and the picturesque little cemetery eight miles out where my parents and grandparents are buried. At last report, though the fire has burned over 100,000 acres and is only 10% contained, the two aforementioned towns are no longer in the “line of fire.”

I’ve been checking web-based weather and news outlets for late news. Oddly enough, I’m not sure if I’d say my brothers and I left Robert Lee at just the right time, or if I’d say that I’d give a good bit to be there right now. I’m sure four preachers would be invaluable fire-fighting assistance!

Earthquakes, tsunamis, fires. A guy with questionable theology and a flare for writing could make a million right now. I’m sure some will.

Sunday is Easter. Pope John Paul II spoke well when he said, “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.” That’s still true, even if the ground shakes and smoke is in the air. Prayer is called for, along with Resurrection hope.



Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Communicating God's Truth Calls for Wisdom

I still remember, and cringe when I remember, the TV interview I saw years ago featuring a Scripture-quoting preacher or church leader trying to defend the well-meaning but largely indefensible actions his church had taken which had landed them in court.

I felt bad for the guy. He’d not done anything needlessly provocative like burning the Koran to pander to cameras and get attention. He’d not done anything cruel and utterly insane like protesting homosexuality by demonstrating at the funerals of fallen soldiers. He’d not even hatched any crazy end of the world theories and promoted such idiocy by spending big bucks on billboards. The media attention he was getting was the last thing he wanted, and he found himself sweating bullets in front of the camera.

I really did feel bad for him, which made me feel even more guilty for finally hoping that for the good of the faith the poor guy would choke or gag or just lock down and be mercifully quiet.

You see, the guy was stammering along, but he couldn’t just talk. He couldn’t just try to make his case. He felt that he had to quote Scripture, and lots of it, and quoting Scripture is what he did for paragraphs on end with barely a breath between them.

I didn’t blame him for being nervous as a cat. He had a poor case to make. Neither the court’s decision nor logic was on his side. No matter how much good his church had probably done over the years, they’d made one very ill-advised decision, landed in court, and roll the tape! To the news media, the good the church had done was not news. It was “Dog Bites Man” stuff. But the present teapot tempest was “Man Bites Dog” headline fodder, and they were eating it up.

The poor guy in the lights looked like he was being eaten alive. And he just kept on quoting Scripture to try to prove his case to people who wouldn’t have known a passage from Second Timothy from a paragraph from a weed-eater manual. He might just as well have been quoting Scripture from the original language. He was not communicating at all.

It was hard to watch.

He lost his case, and probably deserved to, even though he may well have been a fine and godly man. I love and revere Scripture, but I surely would like to have heard at least a Christ-honoring attempt at a capable defense in plain English.

Speaking to the crowd gathered centuries ago on Mars Hill in Athens, the Apostle Paul was more than able to quote most of the Hebrew Bible; instead, he began his “sermon” to the crowd by saying, “One of your own poets has said . . .” It was a good move, and folks listened.

Of course, the great apostle had the best of “cases” to make, and knowing the Lord of Scripture intimately, he knew both its deepest Truth and when the time was right, or not, to quote its words.





Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

"Just Try Harder!" Said the Ladybug to the Worm

“Just try harder!” urged the ladybug.

“I am trying,” protested the stressed-out caterpillar. “And I’ve been trying for hours! So far the only thing that’s happened is that I got so dizzy a few minutes ago I almost fell off my leaf.

“If I’d fallen, I’d surely agree that some wings would’ve come in handy. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and if caterpillars could sprout wings by holding their breath and pushing with all their might, I’d have wings that would make most eagles green with envy.

“But I’m still just a green caterpillar, Mrs. Ladybug, and trying harder is not working! So, if you please, madam, I’d be obliged if you would take your stories of caterpillars sprouting wings to some other tree where you may find a more gullible class of caterpillar.

“I’m sure you mean well, and I’ve no doubt that you honestly believe those stories of winged worms, but I am not too good to be a caterpillar. A caterpillar I was born, and a caterpillar I shall gladly remain.

“I may just be a glorified worm, but at least I am a worm with no airs and no need, by the way, to take to the air. Why, come to think of it, I saw a butterfly fly by just this morning. You’d never get me up in a thing like that! I have plenty of fine feet and feel no need at all for any wings, thank you very much. Good day!”

With that, the caterpillar turned on his many heels and wormed his way over to the next leaf. He felt oddly tired and soon found himself snuggling up to a nearby branch. Hmm, maybe he’d just wrap himself up for awhile and settle in for a long nap. Caterpillars and wings! Of all the silly stories . . .

And of all the silly caterpillars, that one is in for a serious surprise and a world-class transformation. But trying harder won’t get it done. Only nature’s Creator will get it done, at just the right time and in just the right way.

Most of what passes for religion in this world is, when push comes to shove, all about humanity’s ability to do a better job pushing and shoving. It boils down to self-help horse hockey that puts far too much emphasis on our ability and almost completely disregards God’s power.

Christians, of all people, should know better, but we fall easy prey to “religion” that gives lip service to God but is really all about our trying harder to “be good,” which we could do just as well if the cross had never happened. Self-help religion requires no Savior, no cross.

God has something far different and far better in mind. It’s not about human power. It’s not about our ability to keep the rules. It’s about God’s Spirit transforming us from within: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation!” (2 Cor. 5:17-18). And the apostle says specifically, “All this is from God” lest we think it comes from our own power to change ourselves and impress even God with how good we are.

If your faith is all about how really motivated worms can work harder and sprout wings, you need to find a different tree. One that’s shaped like a cross.



Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Regular Church Attendance Can Make You Fat

Have you heard the latest “health” news? It seems that going to church—I mean really going, so regularly that folks notice when you’re absent—not just going at Christmas and Easter and whenever completely convenient and the barometric pressure is right and none of the kids are kicking balls and no relatives are visiting and the dog feels okay and your athlete’s foot isn’t acting up . . . Well, it seems that going to church regularly can make you fat.

According to an 18-year-long study presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association, “people with a high frequency of religious participation in young adulthood were 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age than those with no religious participation in young adulthood.”

The cutesy question posed by msnbc.com contributor Diana Maples in her article about the study, is this: “Are church attendees praising the lard along with the Lord?”

I’m not sure if the study pointed the finger directly at potluck dinners, but the msnbc.com article certainly pointed in that direction. Come to think of it, although I’ve been to a bunch of potluck dinners (and many about as close to heaven as we’re likely to get here), I’ve never been to one where bean sprouts or rice cakes occupied a very prominent place.

But such a study does bring up some other questions.

I wonder how long it will be before the food Nazis lobby for laws requiring a nutritionist be posted at the doors of church fellowship halls, or that dishes for potlucks carry nutrition labels? Lockstep legalists are always very religious about making more laws and are even more scared of freedom than of fat, whether they’re religious otherwise or not.

Of course, I’m not completely convinced yet that never drinking milk that a cow would actually claim, swearing off cheesecake henceforth now and forevermore, and carefully trimming off some of the finest parts of every cut of meat will necessarily make you live all that much longer anyway. I am absolutely convinced that it will certainly make life seem a lot longer.

I’ve got another suspicion, too. I’m guessing that religious people are much more likely to get fat if they attend relatively small rural churches. I’ve been to a few of what pass for church dinners in big city mega-churches, and let’s just say, as charitably as possible, that I can’t imagine anyone getting fat there. If you want a potluck dinner that’s a religious experience, you better shop elsewhere.

According to the article, the study’s lead investigator did say that while obesity may be an “issue” for religious people, “previous studies have shown that the faithful tend to live longer, be less likely to smoke, and to have better mental health.”

In any case, if you happen to come across any manna from heaven, I guess you better look for a nutrition label. You look. I’ll go get the butter.



Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

The Sins of the Spirit Are Always the Deadliest

A few years ago, I did something I’d never done before. Along with two writing partners, I tried my hand at penning some short pieces for what we hoped might become a series of gift books.

We had in mind some little volumes entitled something like, “Dear Mom,” “Dear Dad,” “Dear Teacher,” etc. I even pitched a name for the series: “Endearables.” The writers were named Barnett, Shelburne, and Shelburne. (I christened us BS-squared.)

Alas, most small publishers aren’t interested in gift books and the big boys already have plenty of folks writing plenty of that kind of stuff, so our efforts will likely never turn into ink. But it was a lot of fun lining up words with my brother and our dear friend Joe Barnett.

Thinking of Joe recently, I remembered another piece he wrote. Joe’s one of those athletic insomniacs who gets up way too early to run way too far, and has for years. I expect him to live to be 120.

In his essay, Joe talked about the kinds of dangers a runner worries might mess up a good run: dogs, big trucks, SUV’s, etc. But one day he realized that those obvious threats are less truly dangerous than the ones a runner barely thinks about. Runners worry about dog bites but rarely think much at all about mosquito bites, West Nile virus, encephalitis, etc. Joe made the excellent point that in our lives we tend to worry about the big and obvious sins—theft, drunkenness, murder—when in fact the less obvious threats to our souls such as bitterness, resentment, an unforgiving spirit, and so on, may be far more deadly. In fact, the sins of the spirit are always the deadliest of all.

Consider self-righteousness, for example. All self-righteousness is religious but religion is not the object of all self-righteousness. Whenever our noses go up—at work, at play, or at worship—and we play the snob, it’s just like the little skunk raising its tail. Things are about to get stinky. People learn to recognize the signs and usually have enough sense to back away if they can.

Self-righteousness is, of course, a form of pride, and pride is by its nature competitive. It’s not enough to be good at what we do, we must consider ourselves better at it than those around us. We take what’s good and twist it. It is good, for example, to be conscientious in our work, but it is not good to think that we are more conscientious than, well, almost anyone else. If we beat the daylights out of the people around us, we needn’t be surprised when we end up friendless and alone. Fellow strugglers make excellent friends. Folks we’ve put down and think we’ve bested in almost every area? Not so much.

So, don’t you just hate being around self-righteous people? Careful now. It’s possible to be self-righteous about not being self-righteous.

See what I mean? The sins of the spirit are always chasing us, ready to bite us on the backside.


Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

What We Need Is a 24-hour Courage Cycle

I’m increasingly convinced that the modern 24-hour news cycle blesses almost no one.

With nothing really new to report, even in the midst of the kind of crises the talking heads love to talk about, and talk about, and talk about, the never-pausing news organizations become a kind of TV Twitter assailing those of us who would almost be willing to pay NOT to receive moment by moment updates on our friends’ tying their shoes, eating an exceptionally moist bran muffin, or de-clawing their cat. I’m tired of the twitter-pation. Makes you want to throttle the canary and cease the tweets.

In the midst of the incessant news downpour, one thing is amazing: how quickly a real news story displaces pseudo-news. No doubt about it—when last Friday the terrible earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster hit Japan, actor Charlie Sheen’s on-going meltdown was finally relegated to the back page where it belonged all along.

What’s going on in Japan is real and heartbreaking news, news that the world needs to know about. And, as is always the case in crisis and tragedy, some heartwarming cases of courage and self-sacrifice rise to the surface and inspire us all.

This morning on the news I watched one Japanese couple in their 70’s digging through the ruins of their home and already beginning to clean up and rebuild. They didn’t seem to be waiting for or blaming their government; they just worked with the kind of quiet courage that seems to be characteristic of so many of Japan’s people. That kind of non-glitzy bravery is inspiring. And inspiring on another level is the courage of fifty self-sacrificing workers who have chosen to stay at work in their damaged nuclear plants to try to stave off further disaster.

While those folks are dealing with disaster, our talking heads are, of course, handwringing and searching out all sorts of talking head experts.

On the networks this morning I saw experts of two different types. One was from MIT; he makes his living figuring out how to make things work. Another was of the “Concerned Scientist” variety; he makes his living being scared and scaring others.

Of course, we want our nuclear plants to be as safe as possible, and I’m sure we have much to learn from what’s happening right now. But I suspect we need more and safer nuclear power and not less. If Ben Franklin flying his famous kite had been fritzed by lightning, we’d likely all still be using candles. But perception always trumps reality and the fraternity of the furrowed brow often paralyzes progress. Flying really is safer than driving, but one picture of a crashed jetliner . . .

In any case, 24-hour news is, it seems to me, probably 23 hours too much. What successfully living this life does seem to require, though, is 24-hour courage, and that’s found only in trusting the right Source of power.





 Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

This Eulogy Is a Little Unusual, But . . .

I’ve never done a eulogy like the one now forming in my head.

The little old fellow whose death I heard about this afternoon was quite a character, and I hardly know how to put my impressions of him into words. Anyway, I won’t get to speak at his service. It’s already happened. He passed away around noon, and the burial took place this afternoon with just a few very dear friends in attendance.

But I’ve been thinking about the ol’ boy ever since my four-year-old granddaughter called to tell me that he’d died. We’re really gonna miss him.

A little perspective is called for here. The Bible tells us that God sees when even a sparrow falls. A crashed sparrow, on the whole scale of world tragedies, hardly tips the scales much. But God says that he sees. I’m guessing that means God also saw today when his world suddenly became one pug short of a full load of dogs.

Yes, the deceased was a dog, an old pug named Zig.

For this to be a really good eulogy, I should firm up some of the early details of Zig’s life. None of us know much about his early years. What we do know is that Randy Hall, the other favorite grandfather of my granddaughter, rescued him from the dog pound and brought him home years ago to his kids, Amy & Tyler. When Amy married my son Jeff, Zig came along.

Among his other hobbies, fishing was, in earlier days, a passion. Randy had a pond in the yard, and Zig loved to jump in and chase the fish. Zig actually ended up at the vet’s because too much fishing was causing fungus to grow between his toes.

When Jeff & Amy were expecting Brylan and were fixing up the house, you could see Zig’s mental wheels turning. He was sure the renovation was for him! “Oh, you shouldn’t have, but this is so thoughtful of you!” Then here came the baby. Oops!

But Zig soon fell in love with Brylan and she with him. She’d climb all over him, pull his ears, pet him, hug him, and he was fine with it all. As she got older, she’d grab his collar and lead him to the bedroom where she’d “read” him stories from her books. She’d dress him up in her Disney princess clothes, and he just strove pugfully onward and handled it fine.

As he got older, he began to cough and splutter and behave just like a little old man. I fully expected him to come around the corner Churchill-like with a smoking cigar in his mouth and holding a glass of Scotch.

Yes, he was a character, and I liked him a lot. After all, we both loved the same little girl. He was her “Ziggy-boy” and had personality to spare! And if you think it’s silly for a guy to eulogize a dog, well, sorry, but I don’t much care (and you’ve never had a really good dog).

I’m still thinking about God and sparrows. I’ve never been really close to any sparrows. But I sure thought a lot of a pug named Zig.