Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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“This is the day that the Lord has made / We will rejoice and be glad in it.” If you find your brain putting the tune to those lyrics in your head, you probably learned it in Sunday School or Vacation Bible School. It’s a nice song, with a great message, though it is most certainly a potential “ear worm.” As “ear worms” go (songs that get stuck in your head), it beats the daylights out of “Achy Breaky Heart” and such mind-numbing atrocities. But I confess to a bit of a strain...
It’s a sure sign that you’re beginning to learn at least a little about something when you begin to realize how very little you really know about it at all. And it’s an equally sure sign of how little you know if you allow yourself to suspect that you’re the smartest person in any room. Other folks with more sense (it would seem that anybody would have more sense) will leave the room as quickly as possible, whether the room is a coffee shop or the Oval Office. Corolla...
I don’t know why, but I found myself recently looking at some Google Maps views of an old house. How, I wondered, could it be that old? It was the house that was “my” house, my home, from the moment Mom and Dad brought me home from Amarillo’s original Northwest Texas Hospital. It remained my house for all of my school years. I knew every nick in those wooden floors (Mom would pour wax on the floor and send us off with old towels; we’d spin around on hands and knees as human bu...
Disgusting, this day. At least, a chunk of it. Almost, I might even say, one of those “no good, very bad” days you’ve heard about. Oh, but it could always be worse, someone says, rather unhelpfully. Well, of all people, Christians have the very best reasons to be optimistic and positive. But I hereby confess that I have some days when, to the cheery person assuring me that “it could be worse,” my reply might be, “I believe you. I don’t doubt that it could be worse. And I...
I like steeples. I’ve always liked them. The church I grew up attending was an A-frame structure with a fellowship hall attached, and it looked like a church. But a steeple would have improved the building. I like them. And that is one reason I was particularly hurt when our church’s steeple recently decided to consider leaving the church behind, presumably to seek spiritual care and ecclesiastical mooring elsewhere. OK, I will admit that steeples don’t have spirits, but t...
I was sick and missed school for a day or two in second grade when the teacher taught about Roman numerals. I’ve done my makeup work since then, but I’m still a bit weak on the subject, which means that I am sometimes a bit slow in finding the right chapter in excellent old Bible commentaries and in Super Bowls. Super Bowl LVII (that would be 57) was played Sunday, but I mistakenly called it Super Bowl 52 (that would be LII) a couple of times before the game started. By the...
Perspective. It matters. You’ve heard the “ham and egg breakfast” wisdom? The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. (Of course, these days, anyone who needs eggs is pretty committed, too.) Point of view. How we see. What we see. How we evaluate what we see. I was out in the backyard one recent evening trying to catch a glimpse of the International Space Station zooming by. And I wasn’t just looking up and hoping for luck. A couple of years ago when my brother told me...
When I start writing about the weather, my readers might logically suppose that I’m feeling uninspired, dull and unimaginative, and short of things to write about. They would be right. My apologies. Strange. I just looked back at a few old columns (I’ve got well over a thousand of them), and I see that on several occasions, about this time of year, I’ve written about the weather. So maybe I’m on track. And so is the year. Right on track. Christmas is over. That’s depressin...
I may need to apologize to a penguin. Are you aware that Jan. 20 was Penguin Awareness Day? I wasn’t, either, until I ran across a “news” blurb flashing across one of my screens late that day, and by then it was too late to do anything very practical about it. (And I just assumed that most likely the event was designed to help people to be more aware of penguins and not for penguins to be more aware of their surroundings lest they step into traffic or something.) Greet...
Forty-seven years. That’s how long my wife and I have been married. It probably seems longer to her. I’m counting pretty heavily on the fact that breaking in a new husband would likely be for her, at this point, more trouble than it’s worth. These days, the statistics for folks who get married as young as we did are pretty grim. And I will admit, if one of my grandkids expressed a desire to get married at age 18, I’d likely need some sort of sedation. But for those who marry y...
A new year. In the dance of the universe, the annual calendar flip always seems to me to be mostly a non-event, plastic hype, modern media “news alert” news. I never notice much difference between 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31 and 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1. And yet ... I’ll admit that the dawning of a new year might not be a bad time to check our smoke alarms and our priorities. Regarding the latter, the sharp-pointed question is actually this: For what price are we selling the momen...
Well, here we find ourselves again in January, and maybe some reflection is in order. On the one hand, author Thomas Mann is right: “Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.” So a new year? January? Big deal. On the other hand, I’m always a little surprised when 12:01 a.m. of the new ye...
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...
