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.