A Good News-Bad News Scenario

I have a good news-bad news scenario for you, and it comes complete with a few layers of each. 

It’s good news that the scenario I’ll mention is mostly hypothetical. But even better news is that what it illustrates is, I believe, deeply true.

It’s bad news, and it pains me to tell you this, that you’re on death row, convicted for murder. I hope you think it’s good news that I was quite surprised to hear it and have always thought very highly of you.

It’s good news, even though our friendship makes me reluctant to admit it, that the trial was fair, and the verdict was just. It’s bad news that, yes, you committed the crime. It’s also bad news, from your point of view, that your death sentence is scheduled to be carried out at 11:59 p.m., Thursday next.

I should give you a minute to process this news, good and bad, bad and good. It really is a lot to take in.

But don’t despair! I now have incredibly good news for you. (Note that this is not a deep dive into psychology. We’ll just assume that you would prefer to stay alive.) An amazingly selfless individual has appealed to the governor on your behalf and asked (and this really is incredible) to take your place on death row and be executed on your behalf. More incredible still, the governor has agreed. You’ll soon be free.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine that this would ever actually happen. The scenario is indeed hypothetical, but I thank you for indulging me in order for us to get to this question: If this could really happen and the innocent man was indeed executed in your stead, would his taking your punishment alter your actual guilt in the least? Surely, the answer is No.

Such an act, even if it was not committed by a crazy person (aided by an unhinged governor), and even if it was a completely unselfish act of sacrificial love… Such an act would not, could not, render the guilty truly innocent and the innocent truly guilty. Unless…

 Unless the man making the sacrifice was the fully human, fully divine Son of God. Fully human, he could actually die, executed on, say, a cross. Fully divine, he could literally take on himself and away from those he richly loves all of their sin and guilt. Yes, it would be a completely unselfish act of sacrificial love, but, as opposed to the former scenario, this one would be genuinely efficacious.

Wonder of wonders, the guilty would be completely free, no longer guilty, and alive because, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “God made him [Jesus Christ] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

Why would someone so completely, mysteriously, and genuinely forgiven choose to live as a guilty person? Why would such a person not choose to live with genuine hope, joy, and gratitude?

If this latter scenario is not hypothetical at all but is wonderfully true, then it surely must be the best news of all.

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.

Mother’s Day and Love’s Growing Season

Mother’s Day is only a few days away, but my memories of my mother don’t need any calendar or greeting card company’s prompting.

This morning, I was looking at some Mother’s Day-related columns I’ve written in the past, and what follows is mostly one of those with a bit of updating. Multiple sweet memories drew me back in.

I wrote about doing something Mom would have dearly loved, something she taught me to do, with someone she never met but would love with incredible love, someone I believe she will indeed one day meet.

I was planting flowers with our little five-year-old granddaughter Brenley (who’ll soon be sixteen). I knew we were taking a chance. To plant anything in our area before Mother’s Day is to walk on the wild side and live dangerously. But plant we did. Out in the back yard, we dug down into the soil of two whiskey barrel planters, set in our plants, and watered them with water from our rain barrels. We were standing there, our hands covered with mud. Bren was holding the “loppers” as I showed her where to separate our cuttings. And we had time to talk.

That’s one of the best things about being together and planting plants. You’re working for a common goal, looking forward to what God will do to make the world and your little corner of it more beautiful, and you get to talk while you’re in the midst of the worthwhile labor. We dull grownups need to spend all the time we can talking with little people. They still know what’s really important.

And that was when it hit me: “Bren, your MawMaw Shelburne, my mom, would have loved this! She loved to plant things and watch them grow, and she’d really have loved doing this with you!”

Memories flooded in, countless times in my childhood when Mom would take my younger brother and me out to the back yard, and we’d dig, and plant, and water—and talk. Mom was Rembrandt and her yard was her canvas. I think the only things she loved more than her growing plants were her growing kids and grandkids. So, she just grew them all together.

A lot of what Mom knew about growing things, she learned from her parents. Grandmother Key was always on the lookout for rocks with hollows in them, perfect planters for her little cacti. For larger planting projects, the instrument of choice, both for Mom and Grandmother Key, was a grubbing hoe. I remember setting the plants out and then grubbing dams around them to hold the water in. I’d play with my little plastic soldiers around those dams, earthen barricades prone to frequent flooding. Drowning was a far worse danger to my troops than any enemy action.

Granddaddy Key was often drafted into Mom and Grandmother’s service. He raised more cattle and sheep than plants, but he certainly knew how to grow things. I’m not sure who loved those rare and precious collaborative gardening times more, the father or the daughter. One thing was clear: they loved the time together.

Mom knew that Paradise was a garden, a place to grow love. And love grows forever.

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.