Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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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...
A sinkhole. That’s what I was told our little community of Muleshoe recently acquired on the east side of our town. Full disclosure: I have not seen this new-to-us geological feature with my own eyes. I’ve not even seen pictures yet. I’ve mostly heard second- or third-hand reports that may or may not be accurate, and, though I try not to spread lies and gossip in this column, I warn you that the words I’m stringing together here today are not in the same universe as serious...
I have a good news-bad news scenario for you, and it comes complete with a few layers of each. It’s good news that the scenario I’ll mention is mostly hypothetical. But even better news is that what it illustrates is, I believe, deeply true. It’s bad news, and it pains me to tell you this, that you’re on death row, convicted for murder. I hope you think it’s good news that I was quite surprised to hear it and have always thought very highly of you. It’s good news, even though...
Mother’s Day is only a few days away, but my memories of my mother don’t need any calendar or greeting card company’s prompting. I was looking at some Mother’s Day-related columns I’ve written in the past, and what follows is mostly one of those with a bit of updating. Multiple sweet memories drew me back in. I wrote about doing something Mom would have dearly loved, something she taught me to do, with someone she never met but would love with incredible love, someone I...
I would like to be more creative and less predictable, but both the calendar and the rut I’m in indicate that it’s time for my annual “grinch about spring” column. I will start in a positive frame of mind and simply say that, on the whole, I like living in a place where we have discernible seasons. Many of us here have laughed about our often-crazy climate. The joke and the reality are not far off. If your goal is to sample from a smorgasbord of widely varying weather during...
Our parents were tired. That’s the most obvious explanation for, well, a lot. I’m thankful that they had me, though a “planned” child, I obviously was not. If I’ve done the math correctly, Mom was 42 when I was born, and Dad was 44. Since I am confident I was no surprise to my Father, it’s never bothered me that I was completely unexpected by my parents — until the doctor confirmed that I was expected. I can only imagine how that news took their breath away. I wonder what t...
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...
We can hardly be too careful when we’re choosing what we’ll worship. Most folks don’t read the Old Testament prophets for comedy, but the prophet Isaiah made brutal fun of down-on-their-luck idol worshipers who couldn’t afford to commission a metalworker to cast a custom-made god and hire a goldsmith to overlay it. A high-quality idol can be pricey. Instead, the poorer folks were forced to go with cheaper gods by searching carefully for wood that wouldn’t rot and hiring a work...
Too much stuff. In our society, that seems to be the exact amount of stuff that most of us have. Not exactly a technical term, two words are nonetheless quite nicely descriptive: too much. Stuff storage. It’s big business and growing all of the time because, well, see Paragraph One. People who have as much stuff as we do, and are continually adding more to their mounds of stuff, eventually run out of places to put it. Perhaps we don’t want to disappoint archaeologists who will...
It’s almost Easter, and here I am thinking about an almost-Christmas ride to the North Pole. I wrote one of these columns about that ride 14 years ago. I just reread what I wrote, and, if you don’t mind, I’ll write some of it again. I started by saying the North Pole was surprisingly warm on that ride, but it was less surprising when you realize that my wife and I and our sweet little 2 1/2-year-old giggling granddaughter were riding from Lubbock to Brownfield, Texas, on th...
As I begin to write, I’m about 10 minutes away from hearing a beautiful sound. In 10 minutes, our chiming wall clock will ring out a quarter past the hour. You won’t notice, but I’m listening, and I’ll be pausing for a moment. You see, our clock has been away, taking time for a bit of a sabbatical for its health. For decades, it has been hanging on our living room wall and, as long as I remember to wind it, it has quite precisely and faithfully fulfilled its sweetly toned c...
One of my three favorite daughters-in-law has written a children’s book called “The Rowly Growly Bear.” Not in print yet, it soon will be, and I’m very proud of what she’s done. Danetta is a great wife, mother, and teacher, and a good while ago, she began writing this sweet book. It’s based on a story her father spun for her when she was just a small child. The main character in the book is a little bear — the “Rowly Growly Bear,” of course. And the little bear is looking f...
“When I was 24 years old, I was pretty sure I had all the answers.” So said one of my dearest and, I think, wisest friends. He’s the kind of guy I always enjoy talking to, not least because in the midst of our “shooting the breeze” laughter, he always gives me something to think about. He’s lived a lot of life and taken both its deepest joys and most difficult sorrows with the kind of faith in God that I aspire to have myself. After making the statement, or confession,...
Months ago, I jotted down a few words about, well, fools. It was probably a foolish thing to do, likely motivated by my foolishly reading too much news. But here’s what I wrote. “We all at times play the fool. “Only a fool will install each of the bars of his own soul-cell by flaunting freedom for license, trading love for lust, parodying self-less patriotism with mindless populism, mocking virtue’s civility with soul-rot’s untamed tongue, confusing strong opinion with eternal...
Flat tires. I don’t know anyone who enjoys them. Does anyone enjoy the raucous rumble of tire rubber flapping against the road and your vehicle’s fender wells? Do you relish the opportunity to make the suddenly crucial decision as to how long to glide your once-smooth-now-loudly-limping ride to a stop? You’re actually faced with more than a few decisions that could well be discussed a bit — but not when you have scant seconds to make them. It’s clear that you’re stopping bu...
Driftwood. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. For my mother, driftwood was treasure. She was a country girl, born and raised in Coke County, Texas, and I remember that, even after she’d been grown and married and had long since left Coke County, she had a love affair with driftwood. At least, that’s what I always called it, and I think she did. It’s quite possible we were using the term inaccurately. I just looked up a definition or a few. One dictionar...
No surprise, I enjoy words. I am amazed that, in the English language equipped with an alphabet of 26 letters, those letters can be combined to create hundreds of thousands of words. And that brings up an interesting topic. If you have some time on your hands and are interested in doing just a very little bit of easy research (as in, internet search research), you’ll probably find the number of words in the English language variously estimated at being anywhere from a bit unde...
Possessions and proliferation. Two “p” words, each beginning with “p” as in “problem.” For the first to be last and the last to be first — a biblical concept for sure — I begin with “proliferation.” I’m not talking about nuclear proliferation. That is its own “capital P” problem. Suffice it to say that I love the prophet Isaiah’s words about the time when nations will “beat their swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2). But, sadly, in this fallen world, that time is not now. No, th...
“In the bleak mid-winter / Frosty wind made moan,” writes the English poet Christina Rossetti in her 1872 poem. The poem, which she called “A Christmas Carol,” is one we usually call by its first line, as we do the song(s) written upon which to hang her sweet lyrics. I love the lyrics and the melodies, particularly Gustav Holst’s tune that was paired with the words a few decades after Rossetti penned them. (It’s fun to check out various versions and recordings on the interne...
Where do you find a good riddle when you need one? On at least two recent occasions as I’ve begun writing this column, I’ve wished I could begin by grabbing a good riddle and deftly tucking it in to the first paragraph. Two problems. The first has to do with “deftly.” I get many opportunities to line up words. Most of the opportunities have nothing to do with riddles — unless I muddle them up so much that they morph into such. But “deftly” often eludes me. The second problem i...
Note: I’m sharing an old column this week. Some of it is a bit “dated,” but that figures in to an additional and important point at the end. Thanks for reading. 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 disci...
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 most powerful of all earthly kingdoms was less than nothing compared to his kingdom. The true King was dispatching a troop of angelic hosts, any one of whom would be stronger...
In the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, the wise man wrote many things that will tax most people’s wisdom. Trying to understand is worth the effort. But I most often find myself gravitating to his words in Ecclesiastes 3 where he writes, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens...” He goes on to list a slew of activities with which we all identify. And we all recognize the wisdom of those who know “when the time is right....
