Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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And here we are. One more year. Almost as far as you can get from Christmas Day. I hope your Christmas has been, and is being, filled with everything good. I’m quoting me to me here: “Christians who know the real meaning of the holy days should celebrate everything that is good about them — lights, trees, candles, songs, family, services, bells, friends, snow, sleds, presents, candy, laughter — with more joy than other people and not less. If we truly love Christ more than Ch...
Four candles. At church, we lit four candles. I’m talking about Advent candles. One for each of the four Sundays before Christmas. And now, only the “Christ candle,” the large white one in the center of the Advent wreath, is left. I didn’t grow up lighting candles at church. I do remember getting to light candles at a wedding in my hometown church once. My brother and I were pressed into service as candlelighters. Using real candle lighters. We looked like altar boys in traini...
I’ve been enjoying reading Stephen Nissenbaum’s fine book “The Battle for Christmas.” Most Americans tend naturally to think that the Christmas traditions we share have been relatively unchanged for a very, very long time. Not so. For example, when the Pilgrims arrived in North America on Mayflower and established Plymouth Colony in 1620, the last thing a child in that colony would expect around Christmas or New Year’s would be a gift or present of any sort. According...
In 1850, which was before she wrote her classic “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a story for Christmas. One of her characters describes the difficulty of buying gifts, Christmas presents: “Oh, dear! Christmas is coming in a fortnight, and I have got to think up presents for everybody! Dear me, it’s so tedious! Everybody has got everything that can be thought of.” She then recalls the early years of her life when “presents did not fly about as they do now....
I am writing, or trying to write, in a turkey-induced stupor. Well, that’s at least partly correct. But not, I think, the turkey part. Our family had a really nice Thanksgiving. I hope you and yours did, too. Into a relatively normally sized house we crammed more folks than the house was designed to easily accept. The grandkids buzzed around like happy little bees, playing with the dog (who is never happier than when the kids are home and now seems to be in a stupor of his o...
Saying grace. It’s an interesting term. What about ... Saying mercy. Saying hope. Saying love. We don’t “say” those things. But we “say grace.” And we know exactly what we mean. Wikipedia says that “the term comes from the Ecclesiastical Latin phrase gratiarum actio, ‘act of thanks.’” The article goes on to mention various biblical passages in which, no surprise, Jesus and the Apostle Paul pray before meals. For over 2,000 years, “saying grace” before meals has been a sweet...
You are reading the words of a man who feels, at least for the moment, that he’s done what he can to provide for his family. And I feel good about that. Warm, even. A quick look out into the back yard will tell the tale: firewood. Every year about this time, I get a nagging feeling that I’m neglecting some responsibility, some father/grandfather’s sacred task, and then it hits me: time to get the firewood. Truth be told, I usually don’t have to wait long enough for a nagging...
Seasons are good, and I’m glad I live in a place where we get a distinct taste of each of them. “For everything there is a season,” writes the wise man in Ecclesiastes 3, “and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted . . .” and on he goes, pondering not really the seasons of the year so much as the “times” of our lives. Nonetheless, the deep truth he utters finds its root in the reality...
I was laughing with some of my colleagues. Whether or not you were virus-screened regularly as 2020 and COVID-19 hit us hard, most churches were thrust into a love/hate relationship with video screens of all sorts. If a device had a screen, churches were scrambling for ways to beam their services onto it. We were suddenly tossed into the deep end of the video pool. Many churches spent big bucks for equipment. Almost all churches spent some bucks. And we all spent a lot of...
“When the time had fully come, God sent his Son” — Galatians 4:4 Ten words in English. Thirteen in Greek. Packed full of enough wonder to fill the universe. I’m baffled by even the first phrase, and that’s the easier part. A quick Internet search for “discerning the times” (it has a religious/biblical connotation) turned up a few good articles on plotting a wise course in our lives and culture. I should also report that the majority of articles the search brought up di...
Americans, in general, are rotten at taking time off. For decades, the statistics have been pretty clear about that. Factor in the “Great Resignation” of the last couple of years, stupid (and ultimately cruel) government programs that pay folks more to stay home than to work, and “quiet quitting” (bad, I think, if you’re defrauding your employer; good, I think, if you’re establishing some boundaries employers should have to respect) ... Factor all of this in, and, in general,...
A fish out of water. It’s rather amazing how easy it is to be one of those finny creatures. We’re not talking here about lip injections and a person (I’m avoiding sexism here) who paid good money to look like a largemouth bass. What I’m talking about is being “out of your element.” That happens to all of us from time to time, maybe right where we live and right where we’re sitting. You get called on to do something way out of your usual area of expertise or routine. You...
It was in winter, the Apostle John writes (John 10), “at the time of Hanukkah,” when Jesus was at Jerusalem and in the Temple. “Surrounded” by some really religious folks who demanded that he tell them “plainly” whether or not he was the Messiah, he did. Well, what he really said was, “I’ve already told you, and you didn’t believe me.” But he went on to say some amazing things that all lead to one answer: Yes. One thing you’ve gotta give Jesus’ detractors here is that...
At our church, we recently replaced two old computers. It was time, and it needed to be done, but, as much as I enjoy playing with new technology and was looking forward to being able to boot up a computer without having time to go get coffee while it started, I was dreading the process. What you’re looking for when you do this is, of course, more productivity. What you know, if you’ve ever done it before, is that the new productivity will likely come, but the change will ent...
Tomorrow, as I’m writing, the funeral for Queen Elizabeth II will be held at Westminster Abbey. (My invitation seems to have been lost in the mail.) Seventy years and 214 days. According to Wikipedia, her reign is “the longest of any British monarch, the longest recorded of any female head of state in history, and the second-longest verified reign of any monarch in history.” In Isaiah 6, when the prophet Isaiah wants to tell his readers when his amazing vision and his divin...
Knowing right from wrong is important; knowing when we’re right but wrong is a fruit of deeper wisdom. It is, you see, frighteningly easy to be “correct” on an issue but to be very wrong indeed in attitude and thus inflict damage on our own souls and collateral damage on the souls around us. Being “right” and being “good” are not necessarily the same things, but I like very much the words of the little girl who is purported to have prayed, “Oh, Lord, please make the bad people...
The Son of God. Utterly exhausted. Mind-boggling. And directly tied to the most amazing truth in the universe. God is not an impersonal “force.” He is not a Creator who creates, sets in motion, and backs away. In the Grand Miracle, as C. S. Lewis has called the Incarnation, God sends his “only begotten Son” into this fallen world. A virgin’s womb. A manger. A divine rescue. Jesus Christ will teach and heal and show us the Father as only the Son could. One amazing day, he w...
Be not deceived! Proper dish-washing matters. At least, Jesus seemed to think so. In Matthew 23, he scalds the “religious leaders and Pharisees” for their hypocrisy: “You are frauds who scrupulously clean the outside of your cups and make them shine while the inside is full of mold and maggots. You love to look outwardly religious, the most pious of the pious, but your souls are full of greed, rapacity, dishonesty, and extortion.” Earlier in the same chapter, Jesus warns h...
Where I live, it never rains. In the past it did, at least, a little bit. As the old joke used to go, “Our annual rainfall is about 17 inches. You should be here on the day we get it.” But a few years ago, it pretty much quit. Raining, I mean. Water droplets in the air were never very plentiful here, and wind and dirt have long been far too readily available. When rain chances are near zero, the chance for wind and dirt, accompanied by rodents, chihuahuas, and small chi...
We ran over a skunk the other night. My wife, her former judicial honor who still wields authority in my direction even if she is no longer officially invested with such, would say, “What’s with the ‘we,’ Bucko? You did that, not me.” Well, she was in the car. Yes, I was driving. But I maintain that since the beast was in the middle of the lane, the middle of my lane, as he waddled across the road, the only proper course for the captain of any automotive ship was to take him...
If all of our eggs are in this earthly “basket,” how sad. I find myself thinking of the Apostle Paul’s words written, of course, specifically to Christians: “If for this life only we have hope, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19) No pity needed this morning. But I must admit that I’ve lost faith. I’ve lost faith in those who have enough blind faith to claim to believe in nothing and esteem their own blindness as some sort of tragic courage. Fashionab...
If you know me, you know that I like to sing. I’ll sing when nobody’s listening. I’ll sing when 12 people are listening. I’ll sing when 612 are listening. Give me half a chance, and I will sing. I’ve sung all of my life. It was not unusual for our family to sing together at home. (I know. Too often, families today can hardly imagine ever being at home. And singing at home? “Are you kidding? Did you grow up on Mars?”) We really did. Not the Mars part. The singing part. I also...
As a serious lover of coffee, and as a mortal, I read the headline with interest: “People With Daily Intake Of 1.5 to 3.5 Cups Of Coffee Less Likely To Die.” I find this headline problematic on several levels. First, it’s lousy capitalization. No matter which style manual you use, this title has problems. But you see the bigger problem, don’t you? I suspect that your experience is the same as mine, and I’m telling no secrets here. But, in my experience, though I find coff...
If a cup of coffee on the patio on a nice morning won’t bring you joy, neither will owning a yacht. Or something like that. I don’t remember the exact quote. I recently read it somewhere. Don’t recall where. But it seems that someone was interviewing some very wealthy people about happiness and how to find it. And that’s when one of the incredibly rich folks made this incredibly wise statement. Of course, Jesus said it a long time ago: “Take care! Protect yourself from the...
Usually when a public figure of some sort declares that the latest election or Supreme Court decision was “the last straw,” and they’re seriously considering depriving the United States of their presence and moving to, say, Qatar or Monaco or an island in French Polynesia (Rwanda or Iran rarely make the list), I’m tempted to send them a note and offer to help pay for airfare. I figure we could muddle by without them. But the much more permanent departure of a few of my favo...
