Curtis Shelburne

Use time to fill up on Father's grace

Curtis Shelburne

I’m beginning to wonder if someone—maybe Someone—is trying to tell me something. Since my oldest granddaughter just turned 5 and I just turned 55, I suppose the good news is that I’m ripe for the message (poor metaphor). That&... Full story

Count on God's promise of joy

Curtis Shelburne

I began writing this particular column a week ago. The wind had been howling all day long. Someone has said that nothing in nature is more beautiful than gently falling snow and the pristine glittering blanket it creates. I agree. But if that’... Full story

Author asks right questions

Curtis Shelburne

Of the three major events of Jesus’ life—Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter—only the Crucifixion took place completely out in the open for all the world to see. And when the four writers of the Gospels set forth their accounts of Je... Full story

Failures give grace meaning

Curtis Shelburne

 "What have you learned from your successes and failures?” That was the question the interviewer put to billionaire Donald Trump a few months ago during Trump’s brief (and, I personally hope, never to be revived) flirtation with pre... Full story

Bethlehem will always trump Times Square

Curtis Shelburne

We all know what time does, right? Tempus fugit! I learned that phrase long ago in one of the most practically valuable classes I’ve ever taken, the Latin class at Amarillo’s Sam Houston Junior High. Mister Craddock would be proud. Tempus... Full story

God’s gift inimitable

Curtis Shelburne

What we need most for God to do in our world and in our lives are the very things we cannot possibly do ourselves. They are also quite often the things that we, in our frequent fits of arrogance (it’s called human pride), are tempted to think w... Full story

God’s plan almost always surprises us

Curtis Shelburne

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 th... Full story

Christmas trees don’t have to be perfect to be beautiful

Curtis Shelburne

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 mus... Full story

Advent all about preparation

Curtis Shelburne

Whether we’ll have a White Christmas this year or not is anybody’s guess, but, in my “neck of the woods,” 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 s... Full story

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 f... Full story

God’s people are to 'Overflow' with Thanksgiving

Curtis Shelburne

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 righ... Full story

A Tale of Wind and Sausage, War and Beauty

Curtis Shelburne

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 i... Full story

Suffering, joy result of free will

Curtis Shelburne

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 caust... Full story

When God’s answer to his own son was no

Curtis Shelburne

The answer was No. At least, it surely seems to walk like a No, talk like a No. I think it was a No. Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, was facing a terrible death and a struggle that would pit him against all the forces of Hell. Praying earnestly i... Full story

Let’s talk about flat tires and faith

Curtis K. Shelburne

Sometimes I think my funny bone is oddly shaped or maybe dislocated. Oh, it’s definitely there and works at least as well as it should, but it also works in inappropriate moments. And what strikes me as funny doesn’t always grab other fol... Full story

'Curtis Shelburne' Archive