Spring’s Joy Is Stronger Than the Wind

I would like to be more creative and less predictable, but both the calendar and the rut I’m in indicate that it’s time for my annual “grinch about spring” column.

I will start in a positive frame of mind and simply say that, on the whole, I like living in a place where we have discernible seasons. Many of us here have laughed about our often-crazy climate. The joke and the reality are not far off. If your goal is to sample from a smorgasbord of widely varying weather during the same 24-hour period, this is a great place to give it a try.

But, in general, where I live, winter and spring and summer and fall are mostly lined up with fairly recognizable features. I think the truth is that each of them brings its own sort of beauty, joy, and pleasure. And, yes, each one brings its own challenges.

In the Northern Hemisphere, we’re officially more than a month into spring. I like to try to major on its most winsome aspects, most of which I think of as its Easter qualities—new life, hope, resurrection. New life springing forth pairs quite well with hope. Green and lushly growing vegetation points again toward new life. And hope and new life rush my soul to the joy of Easter and the most amazing resurrection of all.

By the way, Easter Sunday is a moon-connected movable target, but it falls forever in spring as it “always occurs on the first Sunday that occurs after the vernal (spring) equinox.” So, I’d say that spring’s most wonderful characteristic is that it is inexorably and beautifully tied to Easter. 

Now that I’ve made that case—not that a full-fledged, God-created season needs any help from me—I feel a tad guilty veering over into a lane I should probably stay out of.

I usually tell a friend who sprays yards each spring with green-dyed chemical that I find his sort of spring green depressing. It means that our Creator will soon be turning the vegetation truly green, and I’ll be a yard slave for hours each week for months.

But more depressing to me—and it’s been much worse since we’ve been in the clutches of a very long drought—is that spring here usually comes complete with a maddening characteristic. It’s a four-letter word spelled W-I-N-D. When someone here says that “spring is in the air,” the observer is not kidding. On a significant number of spring days here, all one has to do is look out the window to see tons of brown particulate matter flying by in the air along with rodents, chihuahuas, and small children. Want a taste of spring? Step outside on those days and just chew a bit of grit.

And now, as you can tell, I need to change lanes again and rustle up more grit of a positive sort. I would do well to plant some more plants. (I won’t whine at the moment about a mealybug pestilence I recently found in my greenhouse.) I need to smell some flowers and listen to some birdsong (not from goose-stepping grackles). I need to look forward to one of our truly beautiful spring days when being outside is a pure pleasure.

I’m sure the best way to thank our Creator for the changing seasons is to ask him to help us keep our eyes open for their varying colors and hues, smells, sounds, tastes, and textures, and be amazed again at the beauty of the deep joy he has woven into the fabric of each season.

Right now, my plan as this present season springs on is to duck if I see a rodent flying toward me in a high wind—and the wind is raging outside my window right now. But my real goal is to spend a lot more time basking in some genuine spring/Easter joy. It’s much stronger than the wind.

Text copyright 2024 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

God Has No Unwanted Children

Our parents were tired. That’s the most obvious explanation for, well, a lot.

I’m thankful that they had me, though a “planned” child, I obviously was not. If I’ve done the math correctly, Mom was 42 years old when I was born, and Dad was 44.

Since I am confident that I was no surprise to my Father, it’s never bothered me that I was completely unexpected by my parents—until the doctor confirmed that I was expected. I can only imagine how that news took their breath away. I wonder what they were thinking. My two-years-younger brother has a simple answer: “Oh, they weren’t thinking.”

Math again. If my former calculations are right, Mom was 44 and Dad was 46 when Jim came on the scene. Was he planned? Oh, I think so. I’ve told him many times that he was obviously brought on board to serve as a companion for little Curtis. It’s simple logic, I’ve assured him, and he should find a great deal of peace and satisfaction by facing reality and just accepting that a major part of his purpose in life has been to make my life better.

Our folks already had three children—two boys and a girl. My sister (my next oldest sibling) was 15 years older than me. My oldest brother and his wife could almost have been my parents. That fact, I’m told, added to the surprise and some confusion when the news of my impending arrival got out.

So, obviously, our folks already had one well-established family when Family Number Two took up residence. Mom would later do some math herself and report that she had at least one child in public school continuously for 40 years. Who does that on purpose?

Were they tired? Oh, yes. And that explains why, according to our older siblings, that our parents’ standards slipped a great deal with the second bunch, and pretty much all Jim and I had to do was to stay out of jail. I’m not saying that I completely admit the accuracy of that opinion, but neither would I say that they were utterly without evidence.

I give one example. I won’t go into the details, but Jim and I tried a brief flirtation with organized sports and soon discovered that we had a good deal more fun on our own. During our growing up years, fewer bad guys were blowing things up. Chemistry sets included a wider variety of useful chemicals, and we discovered that the neighborhood pharmacy could augment a toy chemistry set quite nicely.

A real breakthrough for us came when we learned in school how to make a paper mache volcano. The prescribed recipe would produce a little civilized “lava” rolling gently over the top and down the sides of the volcano. But using laudable initiative and employing some creative problem-solving skills, we found that a slightly altered mixture could produce a few seconds of real fire blowing out of the top. After the excitement, imagine a gratifying amount of ash settling gently down around the perimeter.

That led to further experimentation. I still maintain that it was not my idea at all to try the mixture on the top of a neighbor’s new fencepost. To any aspiring young chemists reading this, I simply say that I am in no way suggesting such “research.”

My parents were tired, for sure. I’m not sure if their second family kept them young in many ways or hastened their aging. But, seriously, though neither they nor any of their children were without human flaws, our parents trusted in God’s love and grace, and I will be forever thankful for that.

At best, life can be hard, and none of us gets it right—least of all, folks who think that they do. We are all broken in many ways, and we all do our share of breaking. But I believe this: We all have a Father whose love and grace is absolutely available, no matter how often we fall. Not one of God’s children need ever go to sleep wondering if he or she is wanted or loved.

Text copyright 2024 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 Time Flies by at the Key Place

My three brothers and I are back down at our maternal grandparents’ old homeplace at Robert Lee, Texas, for a few days.

Since all of us are pastors (a couple are supposedly retired, though they don’t look much like it to me), getting as much as possible done early so we can get out of our respective towns and covey up together is always challenging. And since we all seem to be connected with non-prophet organizations (bad pun), much else often surprises us.

But for around 40 years, we’ve been gathering here at least twice a year, not counting the at-least-twice-a-year trips in our childhoods when Dad would guide the family chariot up the rock driveway outside this house and carry sleeping children in to the pallets prepared for them.

This place has been an incredible blessing, and the folks who’ve allowed us these times away are sweet to realize how much it means to us—and, truly, how much the “Coke County Ministry Conference” has thus blessed them.

The old house itself Granddaddy Key built in 1928. We’ve rebuilt and propped up a good chunk of it, but it’s certainly showing its years. If our calculations are correct, Granddaddy owned this house for 46 years. My brother Gene has now been the actual owner for 50 years. I know Granddaddy and Grandmother would love that we still treasure this slowly decaying old place and eat around their old table. You don’t have to point out the symmetry these days as four decaying old pastors (two in their sixties and two in their eighties) gather here. 

A couple of us this week spent a little time installing molding around the inside of a window we replaced last year. The old one was . . . decaying. And we even have managed the effort to fill up a couple of bird feeders to entice a few cardinals to come by. What’s a ministry conference without a Cardinal or two?

Other than that minor carpentry and bird feeding, we’ve worked hard drinking coffee, eating hot dogs (lunch) and steaks (dinner), harming few vegetables at all, and discussing, well, pretty much everything. We enjoy a fire in the fire pit when we can and/or burning coals in the little grill. The best “discussing” happens over a fire.

We don’t preach to each other much. It wouldn’t help. As you can tell, relaxation is the main order of “business.”

Call this a confession, I suppose, but some occasional real work does slip in. In an old house once equipped with a wooden fuse box and maybe two circuits, four laptop computers have been humming. One brother is working on another book. One brother is conducting video interviews with mission leaders who are in Malawi, Africa. One is writing a funeral message. And I’m writing this. (For my part, I think I’m working poorly enough that it may not count as real work. I’ll add that to my confession.)

My space for this column is slipping away, as is the time this week at the old Key Place. A Kenyan Christian once told one of my brothers, “You Americans have watches; we Kenyans have time.” It’s an idea worth pondering.

But today, as time (as usual) seems to be slipping by here far too quickly, I find myself immensely grateful again to the God of all our “times and seasons” for just this sort of time and just this sort of place.

Oh, hey! A cardinal just spotted the bird feeder. Some beautiful blessings are hard to miss!

Text Copyright 2024 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

When Idols Rot and Topple Over

We can hardly be too careful when we’re choosing what we’ll worship.

Most folks don’t read the Old Testament prophets for comedy, but the prophet Isaiah made brutal fun of down-on-their-luck idol worshipers who couldn’t afford to commission a metalworker to cast a custom-made god and hire a goldsmith to overlay it. A high-quality idol can be pricey. Instead, the poorer folks were forced to go with cheaper gods by searching carefully for wood that wouldn’t rot and hiring a worker at least skilled enough to set up the cut-rate divinity so that it wouldn’t accidentally topple over. “You really think you can compare the God of the universe with those?” the prophet was asking (see Isaiah 40:18-20).  

Of course, it’s always tempting for humans to prefer gods we can manipulate with magic or smoke or potions or in a thousand ways. Our “god” becomes the god we own and trot out when convenient. Handiest of all is simply to make a god of ourselves. But what if our mirror-idol begins to reflect some serious soul-rot? What if we realize that self-worship isn’t working, and that “toppling over” is more than a theoretical danger?

Author Dorothy Sayers once wrote that many folks “get along surprisingly well” for long periods of time “without ever discovering what [their] faith really is.” And she listed some strategies people have used to busily shove unwelcome and hard questions about their real faith away. (She didn’t even know about earbuds.)

But then, she wrote, came wartime. Blackouts. Bomb cellars. Gas masks. The “threat of imminent death.” Life eventually pushes us into some sort of corner, and the long-avoided questions show up loudly, intrusively. The “fear” stronger than “distractions” demands, “What . . . do you make of all this? What do you believe?”

Wartime. Or the oncologist’s office. Or the cemetery. Suffering is a solvent that strips away easy answers and defies diversion.

We’ve just celebrated Easter and, I hope, felt its real joy. But it is worthwhile to remember that for the three days right after Jesus of Nazareth died, the disciples didn’t know what to believe. Their hopes and dreams had bled out on the cross with their Lord. The tomb seemed to have swallowed—and won. Most of the disciples had scattered like frightened quail.
When they’d finally coveyed up again, it was without room for any ideas of victory. They were in survival mode, jumping at the slightest sound. Their thoughts were racing in endless confusion, their grief rolling over them in nauseating waves. They didn’t look much like the apostles who would later carry the good news to the ends of the earth, the apostles Jesus said would one day sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The mood behind those locked doors was as bleak as any the world has ever known.

And that’s exactly when, on “the evening of that first day of the week,” the Apostle John tells us that suddenly Jesus “came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you’” (John 20:19). Their Lord. Not a ghost. Not a dead man. More fully alive than anyone they had ever seen. And literally bringing peace.

Please, John, tell us more! In the moments between Christ’s appearance and his giving of peace, what looks flashed across the disciples’ faces? I wonder.

But that kind of power. That kind of peace. Oh, that kind of matchless Lord is worthy of all worship. 

What kind of God will we trust? A rotting god won’t do. A god who topples over when life tumbles in won’t do.

Those disciples put their faith in a living Lord: “Then the disciples were overjoyed . . .” (John 20:20).

I believe in him, too. And I rejoice.

Text copyright 2024 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 “Stuff” Is Worth Storing?

Too much stuff. In our society, that seems to be the exact amount of stuff that most of us have. Not exactly a technical term, two words are nonetheless quite nicely descriptive: too much.

Stuff storage. It’s big business and growing all of the time because, well, see Paragraph One. People who have as much stuff as we do, and are continually adding more to their mounds of stuff, eventually run out of places to put it. Perhaps we don’t want to disappoint archaeologists who will come along mega-decades from now. They like to dig through mounds. So, we keep creating them. Mounds, that is. Of stuff.

But already, smart folks who are not archaeologists have taken wise action. They’ve seen their compadres covered up with stuff that they mostly don’t use and mostly don’t need, and these intelligent entrepreneurs can fill a real need. A need for storage space.

Notice some questions that ripple along the surface of this deep and turbulent subject of stuff.

At least theoretically, some of the stored stuff must be worth something. But my first question is, how much of it is truly of value? And my next is, to whom?

Whether the stuff being stacked in the rented space is worth storing is a question the stacker would have done well to ask earlier, but there seems to be a point where most of us stacking stuff have long ago left that question in the dust. Or there’s so much stuff stacked on top of it, that the question has simply vanished.

What’s the difference between high quality stuff and low quality junk? If you pronounce “garbage” in questionable French with the accent sweetly lifted up from the last syllable, is that vastly different from the one-syllable word “trash”?

We don’t seem to need much temptation to keep adding stuff to the stuff we already have, but isn’t “tempting folks to buy more stuff, a vast majority of which they probably won’t use for long and likely don’t really need anyway” part and parcel of something called advertising? Talk about a big industry!

And so, yes, we have too much stuff. We have vast industries to help us store stuff and to convince us that to be happy we really need more stuff. And, as the whole cycle spins on, we get pulled even farther in by a proliferation of experts who sell “systems,” conduct seminars, do on-site “interventions,” and write books about how to unclutter our lives.

You know where those books end up, don’t you? I’ll bet I have three of them stacked among other stacks in my closet right now as I’m sitting six feet away from its door and writing about not stacking up stuff. That closet is the one I’ve been meaning to unstack and clean up. Way too much stuff.

Jesus got right to the heart of the matter long ago as he pointed to our hearts and warned us (my very loose paraphrase, Matthew 6:19-20) that stacking up too much stuff here is fool’s work. We stack up “treasures” here, and what happens? Moths eat it. Rust corrodes it. Thieves steal it.

Christ’s answer? Well, it’s not “climate-controlled storage” or some sort of stuff-cellar installed under your casket vault. It’s to make sure that the “stuff” is truly treasure, the kind that will last past a grave and still be of priceless value—real treasures of love, mercy, grace, and hope that can only be stored in heaven.

Text Copyright 2024 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.