Does God ever do anything just like we’d expect him to?
A world to save, a Gift to give, a Baby to send . . .
And the greatest Christmas Present ever given is all wrapped up in swaddling cloths and laid in a feed trough.
And the mother of the King is a poor Jewish girl whose wedding, the thin-lipped gossips around Bethlehem would be quick to tell you, was much less than a discreet nine months before the birth. Mark it down—those gals could count to nine just as quickly as their modern counterparts.
And the birth announcement for God’s Son? It was proclaimed by angels whose glory split the skies, but (“who’d-a-thunk-it?”) the amazing proclamation was not made at a grand meeting of pompously assembled and well-robed religious moguls of the Judean Diocese or the Eastern Palestinian Convention or the Greater Bethlehem Ministerial Association.
No, it was proclaimed to terrified shepherds whose collars, if they’d had such, would have been decidedly blue, whose theology if you could call it that, had more to do with the equivalent of Starr Cut Plug tobacco than it did with heavenly lights. These were simple and rough-hewn men who’d spent lots of time on hills herding sheep and precious little time at all in synagogues.
They’d seen angels? Yeah, right. The folks back in town knew full well that the last time old Issachar had seen an angel he’d found him at the bottom of a wineskin.
But not this time.
Oh, some of them had been a bit sleepy just a moment before, but that had changed in a heartbeat, in the blink of an eye, as the night sky exploded with light and angels ripped apart the firmament to emblazon Heaven’s message across the shimmering sky.
God’s promise of salvation and the coming of the great King had been made long centuries before. Generations of kings had come and gone. And generations of shepherds had kept watch over their sheep on these same hills while Bethlehem slept below and, slumbering uneasily with the little city, a careworn world waited for God to rouse it with good news.
But then the message of Heaven came. The message of your salvation and mine. And it came to shepherds.
Who’d a thunk it?
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.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Christmas Trees Don't Have To Be Perfect To Be Beautiful
My earliest Christmas memories are mostly wrapped around our family’s Christmas trees.
I remember Mom making creamy hot chocolate and my sister stacking the spindle of the old record player with an inch-high pile of vintage vinyl Christmas music by Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and the Norman Luboff Choir.
Most years the tree had already been bought at (where else?) Amarillo’s Boy Scout Troop 80 Christmas tree lot. I was a member of Troop 80 and thus expected to help sell trees each year. My younger brother was not, but he was a wheeler-dealer sort who liked selling trees and often, as I recall, managed to pawn off more trees than most of the bona fide boy scouts. Jacob (I mean, Jim) always felt Jacob of old settled for far too little when he sold his hungry brother Esau that bowl of stew and only got a birthright for it. Jim would’ve held out for hard cash and then the birthright at the end as a balloon payment.
We’d lean the tree in the garage for a day or a few on its amputation-site stump in a bucket of water while it waited to be lit and glorified. Anchoring the tree in the stand was a chore. Jim and I would crawl under the scratchy boughs and slide around on our wood floor to turn each screw just the right amount. It was never straight the first time.
Then my 15-years-older sister, the unquestioned head honcho of the process, would ascend to perform the task of highest honor as she put on the lights (bubble lights, snowball lights, and all), a job in later years graciously bequeathed to me.
Then we would hang the ornaments, a tedious task but nothing like as bad as the final stage in the process: hanging the icicles.
I don’t see those long, thin, silvery strands of foil or plastic, those “icicles,” on trees much anymore. I hope never again to have to put them on one of mine.
According to my sister, they had to be hung with great care, one at a time. Ten million or so came in a box. You’d drag one out of the box and carefully place it over a tree branch. It was essential, my sister assured us, to start at the back near the trunk and make sure the icicle hung straight down on both sides of the branch. Straight down. No clumps. Which is why Jim’s preferred method of grabbing a paw-full of icicles and launching the whole wad in the general direction of the tree was sternly forbidden. No. One at a time. Until you froze there, died there, decayed there, and Christmas never came, and it was spring and you were still hanging icicles. One at a time.
I don’t know what we thought would happen—apart from sure death—if we didn’t hang the icicles exactly right. Would Santa’s sleigh suddenly crash in flight and the FAA later determine and publish for the whole world full of weeping giftless children to see that the cause was icing—not on the sleigh but improper tree icicling by two Shelburne boys at 125 N. Goliad, Amarillo, Texas, whose wanton and reckless disregard had killed Santa?
I’m sure we never did it “right.” But I remember wandering into the living room as a little lad clad in those great PJs that came complete with feet, lying down almost under the tree, looking up through its branches, and drinking in the beauty.
By God’s grace, Christmas trees don’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. Neither do lives.
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.
I remember Mom making creamy hot chocolate and my sister stacking the spindle of the old record player with an inch-high pile of vintage vinyl Christmas music by Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and the Norman Luboff Choir.
Most years the tree had already been bought at (where else?) Amarillo’s Boy Scout Troop 80 Christmas tree lot. I was a member of Troop 80 and thus expected to help sell trees each year. My younger brother was not, but he was a wheeler-dealer sort who liked selling trees and often, as I recall, managed to pawn off more trees than most of the bona fide boy scouts. Jacob (I mean, Jim) always felt Jacob of old settled for far too little when he sold his hungry brother Esau that bowl of stew and only got a birthright for it. Jim would’ve held out for hard cash and then the birthright at the end as a balloon payment.
We’d lean the tree in the garage for a day or a few on its amputation-site stump in a bucket of water while it waited to be lit and glorified. Anchoring the tree in the stand was a chore. Jim and I would crawl under the scratchy boughs and slide around on our wood floor to turn each screw just the right amount. It was never straight the first time.
Then my 15-years-older sister, the unquestioned head honcho of the process, would ascend to perform the task of highest honor as she put on the lights (bubble lights, snowball lights, and all), a job in later years graciously bequeathed to me.
Then we would hang the ornaments, a tedious task but nothing like as bad as the final stage in the process: hanging the icicles.
I don’t see those long, thin, silvery strands of foil or plastic, those “icicles,” on trees much anymore. I hope never again to have to put them on one of mine.
According to my sister, they had to be hung with great care, one at a time. Ten million or so came in a box. You’d drag one out of the box and carefully place it over a tree branch. It was essential, my sister assured us, to start at the back near the trunk and make sure the icicle hung straight down on both sides of the branch. Straight down. No clumps. Which is why Jim’s preferred method of grabbing a paw-full of icicles and launching the whole wad in the general direction of the tree was sternly forbidden. No. One at a time. Until you froze there, died there, decayed there, and Christmas never came, and it was spring and you were still hanging icicles. One at a time.
I don’t know what we thought would happen—apart from sure death—if we didn’t hang the icicles exactly right. Would Santa’s sleigh suddenly crash in flight and the FAA later determine and publish for the whole world full of weeping giftless children to see that the cause was icing—not on the sleigh but improper tree icicling by two Shelburne boys at 125 N. Goliad, Amarillo, Texas, whose wanton and reckless disregard had killed Santa?
I’m sure we never did it “right.” But I remember wandering into the living room as a little lad clad in those great PJs that came complete with feet, lying down almost under the tree, looking up through its branches, and drinking in the beauty.
By God’s grace, Christmas trees don’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. Neither do lives.
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.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Preparing Our Hearts for Christ's Coming
Whether we’ll have a White Christmas this year or not is anybody’s guess, but a White Monday on the Second Week of Advent is now in the bag.
I love it! Nothing in all of nature is as beautiful as snow. Add to that a church at Christmas with a fire in the fireplace, four or five well-lit trees, a warm sanctuary bedecked with garland twinkling with lights, some beautiful candles, snow gently descending on the lantern in the snow-scene on the video screen (matching what’s falling outside), hot coffee waiting in the fellowship hall, and what’s not to like?
It was the first day of our now-annual Advent devotionals. I think this is our sixth year to offer these little ten-minute moments of worship daily at 10:00 during the second and third weeks of Advent.
When I hatched the idea, I didn’t know if anyone would come; I was just sure I needed to—which surprised me. The last thing I needed during the holidays was another commitment, another group of services to design and lead.
Ah, but there’s that word: “holiday.” What I needed in the midst of busy-ness was a particular time, even if just a simple and short moment each day, to pause and worship and center on the “holy,” to be still and drink in some beauty and be reminded of what God had done and was doing—even if that congregation was just me. I figured that maybe a few other folks would appreciate the same kind of worship and quiet reminder. And they have.
The little group has grown a bit each year. Not today, though. The snow pretty much did us in, but that’s fine. I used the time to prepare for the next few days’ services.
Preparation is what Advent is about. The word means arrival” or “coming.” Long centuries ago many Christians began to celebrate these weeks as a time of “preparation,” preparing their hearts for Christ’s coming—joyful praise for his first coming, preparation and hope for his second, and an invitation to Christ to enter our hearts every day.
In my service preparations, I chose a number of Scriptures that urge us to live always ready for His coming. Sitting in a warm study tucked in a beautiful setting, I found some great Advent meditations written by Christians in times past. Ugly times past. Two of the writers would die in Nazi prison camps. One wrote when it seemed that the world would soon end in nuclear winter.
Not one of these faithful men wrote hopefully extolling humanity’s power to work hard to build a perfect world. Instead, they point to the beauty and power and love of the God who breaks into this world’s ugliness and comes to bring a salvation we could never accomplish ourselves. They remind me that light most brightly in darkness, and that His is the only light that can truly overcome darkness.
Yes, it’s for Christ’s coming that we prepare our hearts. His Presence is the gift we need. His hope is the only genuine 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.
I love it! Nothing in all of nature is as beautiful as snow. Add to that a church at Christmas with a fire in the fireplace, four or five well-lit trees, a warm sanctuary bedecked with garland twinkling with lights, some beautiful candles, snow gently descending on the lantern in the snow-scene on the video screen (matching what’s falling outside), hot coffee waiting in the fellowship hall, and what’s not to like?
It was the first day of our now-annual Advent devotionals. I think this is our sixth year to offer these little ten-minute moments of worship daily at 10:00 during the second and third weeks of Advent.
When I hatched the idea, I didn’t know if anyone would come; I was just sure I needed to—which surprised me. The last thing I needed during the holidays was another commitment, another group of services to design and lead.
Ah, but there’s that word: “holiday.” What I needed in the midst of busy-ness was a particular time, even if just a simple and short moment each day, to pause and worship and center on the “holy,” to be still and drink in some beauty and be reminded of what God had done and was doing—even if that congregation was just me. I figured that maybe a few other folks would appreciate the same kind of worship and quiet reminder. And they have.
The little group has grown a bit each year. Not today, though. The snow pretty much did us in, but that’s fine. I used the time to prepare for the next few days’ services.
Preparation is what Advent is about. The word means arrival” or “coming.” Long centuries ago many Christians began to celebrate these weeks as a time of “preparation,” preparing their hearts for Christ’s coming—joyful praise for his first coming, preparation and hope for his second, and an invitation to Christ to enter our hearts every day.
In my service preparations, I chose a number of Scriptures that urge us to live always ready for His coming. Sitting in a warm study tucked in a beautiful setting, I found some great Advent meditations written by Christians in times past. Ugly times past. Two of the writers would die in Nazi prison camps. One wrote when it seemed that the world would soon end in nuclear winter.
Not one of these faithful men wrote hopefully extolling humanity’s power to work hard to build a perfect world. Instead, they point to the beauty and power and love of the God who breaks into this world’s ugliness and comes to bring a salvation we could never accomplish ourselves. They remind me that light most brightly in darkness, and that His is the only light that can truly overcome darkness.
Yes, it’s for Christ’s coming that we prepare our hearts. His Presence is the gift we need. His hope is the only genuine 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.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Turkey, Tofurkey, and No Pardon for the White House Turkey
After much deliberation and serious soul-searching, I’ve come to a conclusion. If I’m ever elected President of these United States and Thanksgiving rolls around, I’m not pardoning the turkey.
I’m sorry if that flies in the face of tradition, but if it’s ever up to me, that bird’s a goner. If you disagree, fine. Pray all you want for a “stay of execution.” My prayer will simply be that the white meat be as juicy and tender as the dark meat and that it not be overcooked.
Our nation has recently been embroiled in a poultry scandal. A major supplier of eggs (chicken eggs, not turkey eggs) has come under fire for alleged cruelty to chickens.
I’m all for kindness to animals of all sorts. I don’t even like the idea of anybody pulling the wings off of flies, though, with apologies to frogs and users of medical maggots, and admitting there’d likely be some negative ecological consequences, I’d be quite happy if they’d all die (flies, that is). “Suffer not a fly to live” is my motto. But I don’t see any reason to be mean even to a fly before splattering its innards across a flyswatter.
On up the scale, I’d say chickens are even more deserving of kindness. Down with cruelty to cluckers! They should be free to lay their eggs in peace and tranquility. I’d like to think I’m eating an egg laid by a contented bird or a leg from a clucker that was happy as a clam before it went the way chickens were created to go.
But I wonder if I could be forgiven (probably not) for wondering how much actually registers in a chicken’s very small brain. When I was a kid visiting my grandparents at Robert Lee, Texas, I remember Granddaddy walking out the back door of the house and into the “pen.” He deftly chased down a chicken, caught it by the neck, made a wish (maybe), twirled it the way he might have cranked the engine on a Ford Model T car, and off flopped the bird’s head.
What happened next surprised me. The now-headless brainless bird began to run wildly all around the pen. For chickens, at least for a little while, brains are evidently optional accessories.
I learned a good bit watching Granddaddy that day. I was a city kid. We bought chickens at the grocery store; we didn’t catch them behind our house and personally dispatch them before they hit the frying pan.
Recently, it seems that the PETA folks (all city-bred, I’d wager) wanted the folks in Turkey, Texas, where my wife’s from, to renounce real turkey on Thanksgiving and rename the town Tofurkey for a week. It didn’t happen. Folks from turkey use their brains. They know what turkey is for, and they know that tofu ain’t turkey. So, no Tofurkey.
Thanksgiving is all about being grateful to God for his good gifts. Turkeys are among his good gifts, and my gratitude for them reaches its highest point at the moment I’m eating them and thereby ensuring that many, many more will be produced than if we declared them off-limits and gorged ourselves on tofu.
So, no pardon for turkeys during the Shelburne administration. No tofu, either. We’re supposed to be thankful “in all circumstances,” but I think eating tofu at Thanksgiving would make gratitude particularly challenging.
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.
I’m sorry if that flies in the face of tradition, but if it’s ever up to me, that bird’s a goner. If you disagree, fine. Pray all you want for a “stay of execution.” My prayer will simply be that the white meat be as juicy and tender as the dark meat and that it not be overcooked.
Our nation has recently been embroiled in a poultry scandal. A major supplier of eggs (chicken eggs, not turkey eggs) has come under fire for alleged cruelty to chickens.
I’m all for kindness to animals of all sorts. I don’t even like the idea of anybody pulling the wings off of flies, though, with apologies to frogs and users of medical maggots, and admitting there’d likely be some negative ecological consequences, I’d be quite happy if they’d all die (flies, that is). “Suffer not a fly to live” is my motto. But I don’t see any reason to be mean even to a fly before splattering its innards across a flyswatter.
On up the scale, I’d say chickens are even more deserving of kindness. Down with cruelty to cluckers! They should be free to lay their eggs in peace and tranquility. I’d like to think I’m eating an egg laid by a contented bird or a leg from a clucker that was happy as a clam before it went the way chickens were created to go.
But I wonder if I could be forgiven (probably not) for wondering how much actually registers in a chicken’s very small brain. When I was a kid visiting my grandparents at Robert Lee, Texas, I remember Granddaddy walking out the back door of the house and into the “pen.” He deftly chased down a chicken, caught it by the neck, made a wish (maybe), twirled it the way he might have cranked the engine on a Ford Model T car, and off flopped the bird’s head.
What happened next surprised me. The now-headless brainless bird began to run wildly all around the pen. For chickens, at least for a little while, brains are evidently optional accessories.
I learned a good bit watching Granddaddy that day. I was a city kid. We bought chickens at the grocery store; we didn’t catch them behind our house and personally dispatch them before they hit the frying pan.
Recently, it seems that the PETA folks (all city-bred, I’d wager) wanted the folks in Turkey, Texas, where my wife’s from, to renounce real turkey on Thanksgiving and rename the town Tofurkey for a week. It didn’t happen. Folks from turkey use their brains. They know what turkey is for, and they know that tofu ain’t turkey. So, no Tofurkey.
Thanksgiving is all about being grateful to God for his good gifts. Turkeys are among his good gifts, and my gratitude for them reaches its highest point at the moment I’m eating them and thereby ensuring that many, many more will be produced than if we declared them off-limits and gorged ourselves on tofu.
So, no pardon for turkeys during the Shelburne administration. No tofu, either. We’re supposed to be thankful “in all circumstances,” but I think eating tofu at Thanksgiving would make gratitude particularly challenging.
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.
Monday, November 21, 2011
God's People Are to "Overflow" With Thanksgiving
Sometimes we just make things too hard.
I was listening to one of Garrison Keillor’s “News from Lake Wobegon” stories one day as he was talking about the deer hunting season that had just closed up in (fictitious) Lake Wobegon right before Thanksgiving.
Keillor painted a word picture (which I’ve embellished a bit) of the locals watching as city folks came up in droves in their high dollar Hummers and SUVs. The city guys flocking over to the Chatterbox Cafe for Dorothy’s coffee (any way you want it as long as it’s black and doesn’t end in é—as in latté or brevé) and a chance to retell last year’s hunting tales, were armed with brand new rifles with electronic scopes. They had their faces painted black, anti-scent scent sprayed all over their skin and the “camo” clothing engulfing their bodies, a dozen assorted deer calls stuck in their pockets along with their GPS devices, and you knew they’d just been tracking deer because of the tell-tale pieces of bark still stuck behind their ears from the tree branches they’d been wearing on top of their hats. If you walked in the café door and hollered, “Hey, Bubba!” half the guys in the restaurant would break their necks even though these guys might be computer programmers or investment financiers in their day jobs. They went up to Lake Wobegon both to bag a deer and to snag the unique excitement that buying meet at $200 per pound gives.
But the local guys who can go out and get a deer pretty much whenever they want one? Keillor says they drive out and park their old pickups, set up purple & lilac recliners, smoke cigars, play cards, tell jokes (often about city boys who dress like Rambo and spend $200 per pound for meat) and “ever so often a deer comes along and they shoot him.”
I’ll leave you to guess whose deer-bagging average is better.
Sometimes we just make things too hard.
Like giving thanks.
I’ll admit it—some biblical commands in that regard are a bit daunting. Giving thanks “in all circumstances” is a pretty tall order. I’m still working on “most”—with somewhat modest results. “In everything give thanks”? Well, ditto.
I’m afraid the witness of the church and Christian experience is unanimous: we don’t get to pick just the easy commands to try to obey. But the “giving thanks” injunction I’m focusing on this week, also from St. Paul’s pen, is this one: “overflow with thanksgiving.”
In my experience, “overflowing” usually holds a significant element of surprise. I’m thinking of “overflowing” sorts of experiences after eating too much Halloween candy as a child. Or too much paper down the porcelain. Or forgetting to turn off the water while filling the baptistry. Nobody plans those things; they surprise you—negatively.
Ah, but “overflowing” with thanksgiving is a great experience! First, we choose to be grateful people. Then God surprises us by opening our eyes over and over again to the bottomless depth of his goodness and grace, and the countless reasons, large and small, we have to be thankful.
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.
I was listening to one of Garrison Keillor’s “News from Lake Wobegon” stories one day as he was talking about the deer hunting season that had just closed up in (fictitious) Lake Wobegon right before Thanksgiving.
Keillor painted a word picture (which I’ve embellished a bit) of the locals watching as city folks came up in droves in their high dollar Hummers and SUVs. The city guys flocking over to the Chatterbox Cafe for Dorothy’s coffee (any way you want it as long as it’s black and doesn’t end in é—as in latté or brevé) and a chance to retell last year’s hunting tales, were armed with brand new rifles with electronic scopes. They had their faces painted black, anti-scent scent sprayed all over their skin and the “camo” clothing engulfing their bodies, a dozen assorted deer calls stuck in their pockets along with their GPS devices, and you knew they’d just been tracking deer because of the tell-tale pieces of bark still stuck behind their ears from the tree branches they’d been wearing on top of their hats. If you walked in the café door and hollered, “Hey, Bubba!” half the guys in the restaurant would break their necks even though these guys might be computer programmers or investment financiers in their day jobs. They went up to Lake Wobegon both to bag a deer and to snag the unique excitement that buying meet at $200 per pound gives.
But the local guys who can go out and get a deer pretty much whenever they want one? Keillor says they drive out and park their old pickups, set up purple & lilac recliners, smoke cigars, play cards, tell jokes (often about city boys who dress like Rambo and spend $200 per pound for meat) and “ever so often a deer comes along and they shoot him.”
I’ll leave you to guess whose deer-bagging average is better.
Sometimes we just make things too hard.
Like giving thanks.
I’ll admit it—some biblical commands in that regard are a bit daunting. Giving thanks “in all circumstances” is a pretty tall order. I’m still working on “most”—with somewhat modest results. “In everything give thanks”? Well, ditto.
I’m afraid the witness of the church and Christian experience is unanimous: we don’t get to pick just the easy commands to try to obey. But the “giving thanks” injunction I’m focusing on this week, also from St. Paul’s pen, is this one: “overflow with thanksgiving.”
In my experience, “overflowing” usually holds a significant element of surprise. I’m thinking of “overflowing” sorts of experiences after eating too much Halloween candy as a child. Or too much paper down the porcelain. Or forgetting to turn off the water while filling the baptistry. Nobody plans those things; they surprise you—negatively.
Ah, but “overflowing” with thanksgiving is a great experience! First, we choose to be grateful people. Then God surprises us by opening our eyes over and over again to the bottomless depth of his goodness and grace, and the countless reasons, large and small, we have to be thankful.
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.
Monday, November 14, 2011
A Tale of Wind and Sausage, War and Beauty
The wind showed up early last Sunday. The country around here doesn’t need even close to that much of a head-start to be flying by in dingy brown grit-clouds and switching counties by noon. The afternoon would be a brown mess, best ridden out inside with doors and windows sealed, a comforter pulled over your head, and your eyes inspecting the inside of your own eyelids. To top it off, I was already half gone, punch-drunk by the “one-two” combo of a cold and cold medicine.
But we’d already made plans with friends for a Sunday noon trip to Umbarger, Texas, for lunch, an opportunity to do our part in bettering Protestant/Catholic relations.
For scads of years, the good folks in Umbarger have been preparing at St. Mary’s Catholic Church parish hall 3,000 pounds or so of sausage and a corresponding amount of homemade sauerkraut to the annual gastronomic delight of thousands of faithful diners. You may now count me among the faithful. Having braved Sunday’s weather to successfully marinate my taste buds, I’m hooked, and I’ll be back.
Following the meal in the parish hall came for me an unexpected delight. Invited to walk through the church, we were treated to a feast of beauty. World-class stained glass. Beautiful and obviously professionally-painted murals. Amazing! As is their story.
The church was built in the 1920’s. In the mid-1940’s the folks there had commissioned those stained glass windows to be constructed in Wisconsin. One of the dear ladies giving us the tour remembered the priest driving her father almost crazy every day asking him to check at the train station yet again to see if the windows had arrived. Finally, they did. But, now what? Ah, the story gets more amazing.
Interned in a POW camp outside nearby Hereford, Texas, were 7000 Italian soldiers. The priest made arrangements with the authorities, and nine of those prisoners made the trip to Umbarger every day. With great skill, they installed the windows. Three were professionally-trained artists, and they lovingly painted the murals and hand-carved “the Last Supper” into the altar. The war was ending, and neither the priest nor the artisans were sure they’d finish, but they did, beautifully.
Heading home, we detoured three miles south of Hereford. Out in the middle of a field are the only remains of the old POW camp—a large concrete water tower and, lovingly built, a small chapel crafted by the Italian prisoners in memory of five of their comrades who died as captives.
When the war ended, all of the prisoners were shipped home to Italy, but some chose to bring their families back here to live in the U.S., pointing up a massive difference between the experience of American POWs in Germany and Japan, and Axis POWs here. Draw your own very important conclusions.
A remarkable story. War and all kinds of strife separate people. But those who honor Christ can share his love and beauty even in very difficult times.
Sharing some good sausage and sauerkraut doesn’t hurt, either.
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.
But we’d already made plans with friends for a Sunday noon trip to Umbarger, Texas, for lunch, an opportunity to do our part in bettering Protestant/Catholic relations.
For scads of years, the good folks in Umbarger have been preparing at St. Mary’s Catholic Church parish hall 3,000 pounds or so of sausage and a corresponding amount of homemade sauerkraut to the annual gastronomic delight of thousands of faithful diners. You may now count me among the faithful. Having braved Sunday’s weather to successfully marinate my taste buds, I’m hooked, and I’ll be back.
Following the meal in the parish hall came for me an unexpected delight. Invited to walk through the church, we were treated to a feast of beauty. World-class stained glass. Beautiful and obviously professionally-painted murals. Amazing! As is their story.
The church was built in the 1920’s. In the mid-1940’s the folks there had commissioned those stained glass windows to be constructed in Wisconsin. One of the dear ladies giving us the tour remembered the priest driving her father almost crazy every day asking him to check at the train station yet again to see if the windows had arrived. Finally, they did. But, now what? Ah, the story gets more amazing.
Interned in a POW camp outside nearby Hereford, Texas, were 7000 Italian soldiers. The priest made arrangements with the authorities, and nine of those prisoners made the trip to Umbarger every day. With great skill, they installed the windows. Three were professionally-trained artists, and they lovingly painted the murals and hand-carved “the Last Supper” into the altar. The war was ending, and neither the priest nor the artisans were sure they’d finish, but they did, beautifully.
Heading home, we detoured three miles south of Hereford. Out in the middle of a field are the only remains of the old POW camp—a large concrete water tower and, lovingly built, a small chapel crafted by the Italian prisoners in memory of five of their comrades who died as captives.
When the war ended, all of the prisoners were shipped home to Italy, but some chose to bring their families back here to live in the U.S., pointing up a massive difference between the experience of American POWs in Germany and Japan, and Axis POWs here. Draw your own very important conclusions.
A remarkable story. War and all kinds of strife separate people. But those who honor Christ can share his love and beauty even in very difficult times.
Sharing some good sausage and sauerkraut doesn’t hurt, either.
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.
Monday, November 7, 2011
How Can a Good and Powerful God Allow Suffering?
How can a good and powerful God allow suffering?
That has always been a good and powerful question, and one asked most often and most poignantly in the midst of shock, pain, and perplexity.
The question defies easy and glib answers. Pain is a caustic solvent that melts away easy answers and plastic platitudes. The answer of the Christian faith is not easy, and it is given through tears.
If God is absolutely good and powerful, and nothing less than completely loving, how can he allow suffering?
Perhaps the deepest answer is itself an even more difficult question: “How can even a good, powerful, and loving God not allow suffering?”
When God created humanity in his own image, he gave us the amazing gift which gives life and love meaning but which necessarily also opens us up to pain. He gave us free will.
God gave us the capacity to choose good or to choose evil. Puppets dangling from a divine string would never make the wrong move or dance the wrong dance, but would their dancing have any meaning or joy at all? And if the terrible choice for hate and evil and despair were no option at all, would choosing for love and goodness and hope hold any real meaning or joy at all?
In a free universe, our choices are invested with deep meaning. Would the love of your spouse so warm your heart if they had no choice but to give it? Would the hugs of your three-year-old daughter so light up your life if there were no possibility that she might choose to turn away? Would our love of the God of all joy and light mean anything if he had not given us the freedom to choose to spurn him and follow evil and the Prince of Darkness instead? And choices must have consequences.
It’s one thing to ask those questions when life seems good. It’s quite another to ask them when the whole fabric of your universe seems to have been ripped into shreds and pain and evil and wickedness seem to be masters of the day. Most of us have seen those times. But thank God himself that we have also seen the awesome power of goodness, fierce love, and nobility even in the midst of the deepest pain.
How we wish there were another way, but God himself could not create a universe where we could see the beauty of the one without the terrible possibility of the other. Christianity asserts that ours is a God so good, so powerful, and so loving, that through his own unfathomable pain, he gave his Son to save us from evil so that one eternal day pain and suffering will be forever banished.
“Weeping may tarry for the night,” writes the Psalmist, “but joy comes in the morning.”
Dear God, when we or those we love are walking through a long and exceedingly dark and difficult night, grant us the faith, the strength, and the vision only you can give as we look up for the light of the morning.
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.
That has always been a good and powerful question, and one asked most often and most poignantly in the midst of shock, pain, and perplexity.
The question defies easy and glib answers. Pain is a caustic solvent that melts away easy answers and plastic platitudes. The answer of the Christian faith is not easy, and it is given through tears.
If God is absolutely good and powerful, and nothing less than completely loving, how can he allow suffering?
Perhaps the deepest answer is itself an even more difficult question: “How can even a good, powerful, and loving God not allow suffering?”
When God created humanity in his own image, he gave us the amazing gift which gives life and love meaning but which necessarily also opens us up to pain. He gave us free will.
God gave us the capacity to choose good or to choose evil. Puppets dangling from a divine string would never make the wrong move or dance the wrong dance, but would their dancing have any meaning or joy at all? And if the terrible choice for hate and evil and despair were no option at all, would choosing for love and goodness and hope hold any real meaning or joy at all?
In a free universe, our choices are invested with deep meaning. Would the love of your spouse so warm your heart if they had no choice but to give it? Would the hugs of your three-year-old daughter so light up your life if there were no possibility that she might choose to turn away? Would our love of the God of all joy and light mean anything if he had not given us the freedom to choose to spurn him and follow evil and the Prince of Darkness instead? And choices must have consequences.
It’s one thing to ask those questions when life seems good. It’s quite another to ask them when the whole fabric of your universe seems to have been ripped into shreds and pain and evil and wickedness seem to be masters of the day. Most of us have seen those times. But thank God himself that we have also seen the awesome power of goodness, fierce love, and nobility even in the midst of the deepest pain.
How we wish there were another way, but God himself could not create a universe where we could see the beauty of the one without the terrible possibility of the other. Christianity asserts that ours is a God so good, so powerful, and so loving, that through his own unfathomable pain, he gave his Son to save us from evil so that one eternal day pain and suffering will be forever banished.
“Weeping may tarry for the night,” writes the Psalmist, “but joy comes in the morning.”
Dear God, when we or those we love are walking through a long and exceedingly dark and difficult night, grant us the faith, the strength, and the vision only you can give as we look up for the light of the morning.
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.
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