Real Stability in Life Is Found Only in One Source

My head is spinning this week. Actually, this summer.

It was going to be a pretty uneventful summer, we thought. Pretty relaxing. Laid back.

That was before the massive renovation at the house got started. We asked for that. We wanted it. It's a good thing. We're eating most of our meals at the church fellowship hall. We're not really homeless -- it just feels like it. But it's okay. Besides, not much else major was going to happen this summer.

That was before our second son got engaged this summer. Another good thing. And, besides, engagement is not all that time-consuming. It's weddings and massive wedding-planning for massive weddings — that's what will take up the time. We love our future daughter-in-law deeply and her parents are great people and good friends, and this is a good thing. (But I dread the wedding planning. My job is to keep my mouth shut and never comment that big weddings might be worth it if they had anything at all to do with big marriages. No one has admitted that this will be a big wedding, but the warning signs of wedding metastasis are all there.) But this is a good thing.

Easy summer.

That was before massive computer messes at the office. You know, these wonderful machines that save us so much time? Our main machine at the church went way haywire. I now know more than ever before about reformatting hard drives, reloading programs, and rebuilding precious data. I've had weeks of training and the machine is now virtually brand new! So, okay, this was a frustrating complication to life, but hardly a tragedy. And, besides, it happened in a really uneventful summer, right?

And then our first and third sons made the commitment to go to Uganda to help teach missionary kids and just generally assist with the work of the missionaries there for the nine months or so from August through May. That's a really good thing, and the response to their financial needs to make this happen has been heartwarming, but you'll understand if I say there's just a bit of stress involved, too. Still, a simple summer. Yep.

Did I mention that I've got a new book out as of the spring and was needing this summer to work more on getting it OUT? But having a new book is a good thing, be it in spring or in a particularly laid back summer.

And now near the end of summer my number one wife is needing to look for a new job to help replace one of her part-time jobs that's recently gone away. Not a lot of fun, but at least it's happening in a laid back summer.

My head is spinning.

And, seriously, what we have this summer far more obvious than anything else I've mentioned are many, many reasons to be thankful. We also have friends for whom one difficult diagnosis far more than trumps any of the busy-ness that seems so prevalent right now in our lives. Perspective is good.

One thing is coming clearer to me this summer: real stability in life is found only in the one who created our lives. Nowhere else.

Curtis Shelburne is pastor of 16th & Ave. D. Church of Christ in Muleshoe. Contact him at

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