Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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For a lover of the Word and words, a preacher-type who loves anything good and beautiful set in type, you just couldn't find a better Christmas gift than one I received over a decade ago and am still loving. The gift I want to describe is a beautifully-framed actual page from a book of sermons on Deuteronomy written by the great Reformation preacher John Calvin. The sermon that begins on this particular page is labeled as the "16th Sermon which is the Second upon the Third Chapter [of Deuteronomy]," and it was preached on... Full story
Has our Father ever asked us to do anything that we fail at more spectacularly than this simple command? For a long time, I didn't know these words were from Psalm 46. But I knew them. During all my growing up years, my mom papered the wall around our bathroom sink and medicine cabinet with inspirational clippings thumb-tacked into prominence. No wonder four of us became pastors. We'd never brushed our teeth without receiving an unspoken sermon in the process. The clipping I've always remembered best was a yellowed and...
My mother-in-law has just moved from her apartment down and around the corner from our house, where she moved around five years ago, to assisted living in a community about 75 miles away. I don't like it much. I know--we've all heard the jokes about mothers-in-law. And, yes, I'm afraid we've all seen some who deserved both to be the brunt of jokes and to be drop-kicked a blessed distance away. But by far most of the mothers-in-law that I've known actually do the job quite well and are a major blessing. And I'm convinced that... Full story
A gentleman by the name of Maynard Good Stoddard wrote an article for — The Saturday Evening Post — many moons ago which my brother, for some reason, sent my way. It is entitled "To Beard or Not To Beard." Mr. Stoddard said that one day he finally figured out why he had been pushed around at home for so many years. It was, he had discovered, because his chin lacked authority. He mentioned that he felt no need for one of those "Jay Leno jobs." But he felt a definite need for something a bit more along that very dis...
Christians are united as brothers and sisters spiritually by the very same truth that makes siblings brothers and sisters physically—they have the same father (well, Father, in this case). What an amazing blessing! God is our Father! It is not simply that God gives us physical life, though he does, and in that sense God is the Father of everyone, but God is our Father in that he gives his believing children a new kind of life, a spiritual life which, unlike biological life, will never fade but is fit for eternity. The two g...
I love the church! Not just (just?) the church universal, that marvelous and miraculous Body of Christ composed of all God's children, everyone who ever has or ever will wear Christ's name, all the sons and daughters of God ... Oh, I love "that" church, too. But I also love the local expressions of that Body, the little bands of disciples — all of them small indeed compared to the grand Body from which they spring — working in a million places to glorify God and share Christ's love. I love the church. Oh, I know, loving the...
When St. Paul stakes with words God's claim of sovereignty over the circumstances of our lives and proclaims the Almighty's promise of ever-present and never-failing love, the great apostle does so with his eyes wide open. "What can separate us from the love of Christ?" he asks, and when he lists among the weapons of the enemy, "trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword," his list is much more than hypothetical. These are the words of a man who has opened his eyes on many mornings and seen...
"The Online Etymology Dictionary." That's the name of a website I discovered recently. No, it's not a site devoted to knowledge about bugs. That's "entomology." Etymology is indeed a "-logy" so it's "the science of" something. But not creepy-crawlies. Etymology is the science of word derivations. The site's owners describe it as "a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English." Nicely put. I'm glad somebody created such a site. I'm imagining them as a group of under-appreciated, underpaid, societally under-valued, mildly...
In an old issue of "Leadership Journal", Haddon Robinson retells the story of a very talented young musician who was crestfallen as he sat reading the critics' reviews of his recent concert. The negative words stung his soul like fire. It was an older and more accomplished musician, the famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, who comforted the young man by patting him on the back and remarking, "Remember, son, there is no city in the world where they have erected a statue to a critic." Maybe that's at least partly what Jesus...
I guess I need to see an Eye, Ears, Nose & Throat specialist. Or maybe a neurologist. I keep getting things stuck in my head. I got a frog stuck in my throat at the end of a recent sermon. (Better for it to hop in at the end than the beginning.) Allergies, I think. Exacerbated by the fact that it never rains here anymore. I often get songs stuck up there. Sometimes they're really good ones. But the more pernicious the song, the longer it seems to stay stuck in my cranium. Stuff like "Achy Breaky Heart" pops in unbidden. Or...
I don't know exactly when most of us trade our imaginations for calculators, but it happens far too early, and it is a very bad trade. Once the deal is done, we spend far too many of our days wandering through life with our eyes half-closed, our spirits half asleep, dull and insensible, so witless that we barely notice the grievous loss. But sometimes a beautiful glimpse of the wonder we once had by the overflowing bucket-load takes us back to what is precious. I think that's what happened to me on a wonder-filled Easter even...
