Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Well, how are your New Year’s resolutions coming along? Oh? Sorry. I didn’t mean to touch a sore spot. I suppose nothing is a much sorer spot for humans than having to face the fact that we don’t measure up even to our own standards, much less to God’s. The spirit indeed is willing. We want to do better. Be better. But the flesh is ever so weak. Which is why I’m increasingly unimpressed with human resolutions and willpower and more and more amazed by our Father’s power as we...
As I write this week’s column, can I just admit from the outset that I’m not sure I should be writing this week’s column? At least, not on this topic. I could easily come off as grouchy and pessimistic, depressed and depressing. Better to keep my mouth shut. But I’ll give it a shot. Writing, that is. I’m not disciplined enough to shut up. You see, just a few days ago we blew right into and right past the eighth day of Christmas, better known as New Year’s Day. Personally, I ca...
There is holiness to memory, Philip Gulley writes in his “Christmas in Harmony,” and “a sense of God’s presence” in what Gulley calls the “mangers of the mind.” Perhaps the memories in the manger center on wonderful moments in a decades-long line of Christmas eve services or the particular way your family lit the Advent candles each year. Other memories in the manger almost certainly focus on Christmas joys, as commonplace as they are special, all wrapped up in the way your...
“By the way, I’m not doing Christmas cards. If you want them sent, you’ll have to do it.” According to Sam Gardner in Philip Gulley’s delightful “Harmony” series, it was the same “fight” every year. Sam, pastor of the Harmony Friends’ Meeting (Quaker church) would buy four boxes of Christmas cards at Kivett’s Five and Dime and lay them on the dining room table with the address book nearby. On this particular year, nothing happened. So he moved the cards into the bedroom, pla...
Thank the Lord for shepherds and stargazers. While muckety-mucks in Rome were trying to figure out new and improved ways to shake even more shekels from the pockets of the subjugated populace and further filch the meager bread of the common man, the highest of kings was pretty much ignoring Rome. The true King was dispatching a troop of angelic hosts, any one of whom would be stronger than an assembly of all of Rome’s best troops, to appear before shepherds. Shepherds? Yes, s...
Zero to sixty. That’s how fast this year we revved up the Thanksgiving sleigh, slid “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house,” slammed down the turkey and dressing, and, before the tasty bird was even digested, hitched up the red-nosed reindeer, jingling all the way. My head’s spinning, and my feet are having a hard time catching up with the calendar. Christmas will be here before we know it, and, lest we take measures, before we’re genuinely ready to ob...
For just a moment, ponder this year’s calendar. You’ve already noticed, I’m sure, that it is playing tricks on us this time around. Thanksgiving and the turkey, dragging their heels, showed up way late, which means that Advent (and thus Christmas) are upon us way early. I’ve often complained that the most difficult Sunday of the year to plan and “to preach on” is the usual “dead” Sunday, falling between Thanksgiving and the first Sunday of Advent. You see, your official T...
In an old issue of Leadership Journal, Chris T. Zwingelberg made this observation: While everyone is familiar with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and his amazingly keen powers of observation, few of us are aware of Holmes’ belief that deduction and observation are even more necessary in faith and religion than they are in detective work. In Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty,” Doyle pictures his famous sleuth studying a simple rose. Holmes’ famous side...
Here we go again. It’s Monday morning. Mondays come after Sundays, and, like most pastors, I tend to be toast on Monday mornings. Brain dead but breathing. It’s not the best day to write, but the deadline for this column is noon on Mondays. Someday, when pigs fly and twits quit tweeting, I’ll embrace some discipline and manage to write days before the deadline. But I like to think that I write best with adrenaline pumping and coffee fueling neurological fission. If I wait...
Grief. It’s a far bigger word than we usually think. Oh, we all know it applies to the loss wrought by death as we’ve stood at the graveside of a loved one, smelled the flowers, felt the emptiness, and wondered how to face a world so suddenly changed. And every day changes. We may think we’re doing, well, some better. At least, maybe making small steps in the right direction. And then we get up on the next day and find ourselves, it seems, having taken two, or 20, steps backw...
I cannot imagine why we put up with it. I’m thinking about the sick state of healthcare in America. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been to Third World countries and seen misery and need. I’m genuinely thankful for what we have. I have good friends in all sectors — physicians/providers, hospital administrators, insurance folks, attorneys, etc. I’m incredibly thankful for the health insurance my wife and I have. Having served on a board charged with finding health insurance f...
I’m weird, and I know it. But I sort of enjoy spending some time in cemeteries. I’m talking, of course, about the times when I want to be there, not the times when I have to be. Big difference. There’s been way too much of the latter recently, it seems to me. But I find cemeteries peaceful and interesting. Strolling among the tombstones (since I don’t have to mow around them, I much prefer the standing ones), I get the chance to play Sherlock Holmes and deduce all sorts o...
I love words. Perhaps I’ve not fallen into epeolatry yet, but it’s always fun and interesting to meet a new word. (Like epeolatry, which is the worship of words.) One of the best places I’ve found to discover new words and interesting things about words of all sorts is through the free e-mail publication “A.Word.A.Day” offered at www.wordsmith.org (since 1994). Last time I checked (which was years ago), their daily subscriber list was passing 600,000. I like that (even though...
Grace is hard. It is almost incomprehensibly wonderful. It seems almost too good to be true because it actually is almost too good to be true. It is amazing. But it is hard. Grace is hard because accepting it means nothing less than death to our pride. If the sacrifice of Christ really is, as the New Testament claims, all-sufficient to save me, that not only means that I am powerless to save myself apart from faith in that sacrifice, it also means that I have no right — l...
Are you considering trying to buy a light bulb? Good luck to you. A few evenings ago, my wife and I were in Amarillo baby-sitting (playing with, laughing with, snuggling with, rollicking and frollicking with) some sweet grandkids. At some point, I discovered both that my phone was needing a charge and that I’d forgotten the cable charged with supplying that need. Eight% left. Red light blinking weakly. Screen dimming to conserve its faltering power. My phone! Perilously c...
Let’s talk about paint. My wife and I have been involved in an upstairs bathroom renovation. She was mostly involved in, uh, “reminding” me regularly for several years (or maybe a decade) that we really needed to do something along this line. She seemed to hold something against antiquated fixtures and, particularly, their color. (If you savvy Pantone colors, plug in PMS 1625. Or just picture something in the peach / apricot / salmon / pinkish family.) For many of those years...
All honorable work is God’s work, a calling, and anyone serious about doing a good job in his/her work derives priceless benefit from the example of respected mentors. Surely teachers and doctors, business folks and farmers, all need mentors to encourage them to “soldier on.” One of my most influential mentors passed away almost a year ago, and I never met him. Eugene Peterson, best-known for his amazing paraphrase of the Bible, “The Message,” never wrote anything poorly, b...
We had two Sundays this week at our little church. Two Sundays two days in a row. Well, not really. But it seemed like it. The first Sunday was Saturday as we held the funeral of a fine man and good friend, a well-loved and faith-filled member of our church. We sang and prayed and shared God’s good news of hope. Sweet melodies and rich tones rose in that sanctuary and lifted our spirits, and God’s Spirit comforted, and God’s word was balm, and the hearts of God’s people...
People can be maddening, frustrating, bull-headed, mean, dumb, astonishing, resilient, weak, strong, gentle, loving, perplexing, bitter, graceful, resentful, hateful, merciful, and ... pick any adjective and stack ’em up. Any one of those will apply to a few someones, and lots of them will apply to the same folks at the same time. None of that is news to anyone. Having said that, and having lived for six decades, I must say that, as many human idiosyncrasies and traits as I...
In his fine book “What’s So Amazing About Grace,” author Philip Yancey writes that at a British conference on comparative religions, scholars from around the world were discussing the most basic beliefs of Christianity. One important question in particular led them into pretty serious debate. That’s when C.S. Lewis wandered into the room. When he asked, “What’s the rumpus about?” he was told that they were asking what Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions...
You’ve heard, no doubt, of the legendary search for the holy grail. In everything from tales of medieval knights, legends of King Arthur, the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and even Monty Python satirical sketches, the grail, supposedly the cup or chalice from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, has been a precious object searched for, longed for, even lusted for. I don’t have space to describe it, but who can ever forget the great movie scene and the driest of...
“I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. ... I believe in the Holy Spirit ...” Yes, I do. With all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength, I do. Some of you will quickly recognize those words and phrases as coming from what is traditionally known as “The Apostles’ Creed.” The actual words were not written by the apostles, but it is an early and important statement of basic Christian beliefs,...
“I’m in a twelve-step program for recovering ascetics,” I explained to my missionary nephew. I knew he’d get it. More than a little conversant in theology and church history, Ian had joined his dad and uncles at the old “home place” at Robert Lee, Texas. We had been dining quite well out by the fire pit when I felt led to confess. In case the humor misses you, let me explain. To greatly oversimplify, may I just say that “asceticism” is a kind of over-reaction to “hedonism....
Hey, friends, I’ve got a favor to ask. Like, if you, like, catch me using, like “like” in a sentence or, like, even in a phrase, like, I’ve thus far used “like” in this sentence five senseless and indefensible times, please, please — I’m begging you — slap me hard across the face. And the sooner, the better, before the worm digs into my brain’s neurons and embeds itself so deeply that it can’t be removed. I feel almost the same about, uh, “uh.” I suppose we all use, and c...
Of all of the many astounding qualities of Jesus, one of the most amazing and winsome is that, as Philip Yancey has written, Jesus was “a sinless friend of sinners.” I keep being drawn back to this amazing fact. This is not the first time I’ve tried to write about this quality of Christ’s life. It will certainly not be the last. A thousand pages would not be enough to adequately plumb the depths of this amazing truth: Jesus not only loved sinners, meaning that he longed for th...
