Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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“O most gracious God,” wrote the eloquent sufferer, “on this sickbed I feel under your correction, and I taste of humiliation, but let me taste of consolation, too.” John Donne, poet and priest, so wrote in one of his “devotions” in 1623 (which were published in January 1624 as Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions). I may be mistaken about the date, but I believe it was in 2000 when, in an article in Christianity Today, Philip Yancey shared a brief modernized excerpt from Donne...
“Stay with us,” came the morning TV tease, “and we’ll hear from a restaurant critic who’ll help us plan for a stress-free holiday. Coming up is his guide to the perfect Thanksgiving dinner.” Well, that put a bad taste in my mouth, and I tuned out before I heard what to stuff in my stuffing. Any recipe that claims to marry the flavors of “stress free” and “perfect” is 100% guaranteed to cook up gut-wrenching failure and frustration. On any holiday. On any day. In any life. I...
Infracaninophile. The word above, friends, is indeed an actual word. By the time you finish reading the other words I’m hoping to line up here, my additional hope is that you might have some idea as to what it means and how to use it. But I confess that my deeper hope and confident belief is that you will also have enough good sense not to use it. I can only imagine how impressed folks down at the coffee shop, the waiting room, or the teachers’ lounge would be should som...
Word salad, here we come. Miniskirt. Degradable. Scuzzy. Prefaded. Lite. Porn. Salsa. Nucleosome. Cockamamie. Turista. Gigawatt. Interrobang. Bioweapon. And some two-word entries. Zip code. Fender bender. Tumble dry. Satellite dish. Launch window. Road rash. Log on. And let’s not forget some hyphenated contenders. Artsy-fartsy. Three-pointer. Get-go. T-ball. One-liner. Mixed-media. Coffee-table. Anti-seizure. My question: What do all of these words or combination-words have i...
A “teaser” on the front of the little magazine touted an article inside: “How to Triple Your Answers to Prayer.” I found myself wondering what might be prescribed. Incantations? A cauldron filled with a steaming potion featuring eye of newt, tongue of frog? Could I get more answers to prayer (answers that I like) if my technique was better or my recipe more precise? Is the bottom line the number of really “good” answers I get and catalog? I think I’d like the guy who said...
As I write, I’m just a few days away from attending another Biannual Coke County Pastors’ Conference. By the way, “biannual” is not one of my mother tongue’s brightest children. Wishy-washy, and depending on which authorities you consult, it can mean either “occurring twice a year” or “occurring every two years.” “Semi-annual” and “biennial” already handle “every two years.” I need “biannual” to pay for its keep, quit playing it both ways, fully adopt the best verdict, and...
I don’t remember how old I was, but I do remember being hungry. What I’ll describe took place, I think I recall, on a Sunday morning, and I know it was many decades ago. I feel sure that I was minding my own business. I know my mother was minding hers for that morning as she happened to be doing some cooking, probably for a church dinner, as I happened to be making my way through the kitchen. The details have long since become a bit foggy. I recall that, on a platter, bro...
Lazarus was dead. Of that sad fact everyone was now absolutely sure. He had been barely breathing when Mary and Martha, his sisters, had sent the urgent message to Jesus to beg the Lord to return to help the desperate friends. They needed Jesus badly, and quickly. Yesterday, if possible, and it wasn’t possible. Even for the Lord. But the odd truth is that after he’d received the message from these dearly loved friends, Jesus had not hurried. When he finally arrives back nea...
I can sleep through almost anything, but some things are guaranteed to get your attention. Recently, my wife and I were sitting at home watching television, and I’m sure I was flirting with drowsiness (since a couch and a TV are almost as conducive to sleep for me as a pillow and a bed), when we were both suddenly jolted as fully awake as we’ve ever been in our lives. Retina-searing light flashed through the room and an ear-drum-splitting boom rattled the pictures on the wal...
Something about the mountains my soul needs regularly and loves always. There’s just something about gaining altitude, heading up. “I will lift up my eyes to the hills,” writes the psalmist as he beautifully affirms that all of his “help comes from the Lord” (Psalm 121). Reading the Gospels, I feel some sweet altitudinal affirmation when I read about Jesus “going up on the mountainside” to pray. Of course, we can pray and receive strength from our Father at any and all altit...
A gentleman by the name of Maynard Good Stoddard wrote an article for The Saturday Evening Post many moons ago that my brother, for some reason, sent my way. It is entitled “To Beard or Not to Beard.” Stoddard said 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 somethi...
Have you ever been caught “red-handed?” The expression harkens back at least to the Middle Ages. If a peasant were caught killing a deer in the forest of his lord or king, he was said to have been caught “red-handed” with the blood of the deer probably literally still on his hands. The penalty was severe. Jesus and his apostles had just arrived in Capernaum when he surprised them with a question that caught them “red-handed.” “What were you arguing about on the road?” “Huh, Lo...
A rustler’s moon. I’m told that’s what cowboys used to call a quarter moon. It was bright enough that a rustler could see to carry out his cattle filching, but it was not so bright as to spotlight his thievery. But here’s a fact likely lost on all but your most astronomically gifted cattle rustlers: Be it quarter moon, half moon, 13/16 moon, or blue moon, not a single photon of “the light of the silvery moon” is its own; every ray is actually the light of the blazing sun...
Oops! The power, as in, the electricity here, went off recently for a few hours. (I hasten to apologize to hurricane victims who will quite rightly see my moaning as a firecracker problem compared to the nuclear difficulty they’ve endured for days or weeks.) For about one minute, I didn’t even notice. My wife and I were sitting in the living room and drinking coffee. Had the power been fritzed a bit earlier and the coffee not been automatically pre-dripped for us, I’d have not...
Hi, I’m Curtis, and I’m a worryholic. That’s the way I’d introduce myself at a 12-step program for worriers and anxiety addicts. And maybe there are some. Programs for worriers, I mean. I should check on this. But come to think of it, I’m already involved in one. It’s called the church. Not everyone there is a worrier, but more than a few fit the bill: People just like me who wage a daily battle with worry and are as prone to reach for it as an alcoholic is to reach for a bott...
Paperboy. Now, there’s a term you don’t hear mentioned much in general conversation these days. In my family, being a paperboy was a rite of passage, an introduction into the free enterprise system, and a valuable education. I understand that my older brothers once held a bit of a monopoly on that honorable career in a then-smaller Kerrville, Texas. Still, I was and am impressed. So, when I was growing up in Amarillo and became old enough to stick my head through a pap...
“Short words are best,” asserted Winston Churchill, “and the old words when short are best of all.” So, may I suggest three — very short and very old, which, when lined up and strung together are the best three that could possibly be: God is love. These words are chiseled into the rock, woven into the fabric, of the universe. More than that, if anything could be more, they are living and implanted by the Author of life into its every cell, resonating in every breath and heart...
One day, almost 60 years ago, when I was just a small lad growing up at 125 N. Goliad Street, in Amarillo, Brock Bronson scared the living daylights out of me. Someday, I’ll get around to describing a “living daylight,” but suffice it to say now that I’m still short of them. Brock’s fault. Brock Bronson. Now there’s a name that means business. Especially if it’s attached to a teenaged bully sort of guy. Especially if you’ve barely broken into double digits age-wise yourself. E...
Pets and patriotism. Aside from the pleasing (to my ears) alliteration of two words beginning with Ps, I’m not sure what I think of those three words strung together. I’m not aware of any sociological or other studies funded to try to determine if a link exists between pet ownership and a significantly higher level of patriotism than the levels normally measured in pet-less people. But, come to think of it, don’t you think that sounds exactly like the sort of study some gover...
Words and birds. Freedom and faith. I’d planned to begin by sharing a simple story about a bird that “flew the coop.” But then I flew a little off course by looking for a little “poop” (as in, information) about “flying the coop.” Forgive me, but you understand that, with many birds around, the type of information I just mentioned drops pretty much everywhere. “Flying the coop” led me to a Merriam-Webster online article about “Common Idioms That Come from Chickens” (along wi...
A God who gets tired. That, my friends, is quite a picture. But it’s one of the amazing pictures hanging on the wall of the universe we inhabit. And, surprise, it hangs right there in the living room. I’d have expected to see a Do Not Touch sign prominently displayed, but, on the contrary, a rather amazing placard posted nearby informs and invites us: Please Note the Question Scribed on the Back of the Frame. So, before gazing at the front and center depiction itself, we rea...
I’ve got a question for you. And I’m not kidding in the least. Why is resting so hard? I understand that finding balance in life is a challenge. But if “too lazy to breathe” is on one end of the spectrum, most of the folks I know err very much in the opposite direction. I’d call that “rest-less.” They need to rest more. “Rest,” according to one definition, is “freedom from activity or labor.” That sounds rather appealing, almost like something worth an occasional try. It’s eas...
Note: What follows is something I wrote in January 2000. As another Father’s Day is approaching, I’d like to share these words with you again. It’s been just a little over 24 hours since I got word that the kindest, gentlest, strongest, and best man I have ever known passed away. He was my father. Though many thoughts have been racing through my mind, I’ve realized that, if everybody had a father like I had a father, well, lots would be different in this world. If everybo...
“Hey, why do I have to do all the work?” If you had parents who cared about teaching their kids to work and who thought that a good place to start would be with some assigned tasks around the house, you’ve probably uttered the complaint above. It’s also more than possible that one of your siblings might have lodged such a complaint to the parental “powers that be” while rather obviously scowling in your direction. Isn’t it amazing how even little children come equipped with...
My wife and I recently celebrated our 39th anniversary, and I’m thankful. Granted, both the original event and this most recent occurrence came almost on top of Easter Sunday (as have several of those occasions). As well it should, Resurrection Sunday pretty well eclipses any other anniversaries. Someone who knows us well, and is even a little proficient with simple arithmetic, might be thinking, “OK, I don’t mean to be a busybody, but aren’t three of your four sons already...
