"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.