Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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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...
I guess I’m safe. On my computer, I mean. My passwords for my online accounts are so strong that I can’t even get into half of my own accounts more than half of the time. And it takes so much time. You need “two-factor authentication,” the computer security experts say. What that means is that even if I manage to remember my password, I still have to go to my mobile phone to get the code that they send, or, for Google, head over to YouTube and tell them, “Yes, I would ver...
Large letters on a big billboard read “See The Good.” White words on a black background. Caps and lower case, just as rendered here. I don’t know who paid for the billboard ad. It’s possible there was some fine print at the bottom claiming responsibility or enlarging a bit on the three-word admonition, but I drove by too fast to notice any. “See The Good.” Almost immediately, I saw the bad. Or, at least, the wrong. Maybe you did, too. I think they messed up by capitalizin...
I’m writing this on Father’s Day. About an hour from now, it will be the day after Father’s Day. But I will never have a day when I don’t think about my father. I’ve never lived a single second of any day having to wonder if he loved me. My father was the best man I have ever known, and I’ve known some incredible men. I don’t say that with arrogance. I’m obviously stating the obvious when I ask, who has any say in whom his or her father will be? Or, for that matter, whether...
I feel like I’m writing this particular column about five months early. It’s the kind of thing that I’d normally center on just before Thanksgiving. As I write, it is not Thanksgiving. It is not November. It is mid-June. We’ve not even reached the summer solstice yet. This year, that astronomic event officially occurs at 3:14 a.m. Tuesday (MDT). Set an alarm on your phone. But it certainly feels like summer. We hit 108 degrees a day ago. The plants in my yard were droopin...
Every year during the second week of June or so, I start feeling an almost instinctive urge to head south. At first, this might seem surprising to anyone who knows me. It surprises me, too. I’m not usually particularly interested in heading south. Let me explain. I was born, and plan to live and die, a Texan. This does not mean that I’m blind to the assets and blessings of other states. I find myself longing right now, for example, for some time in the mountains of New Mex...
I’d promised myself not to write this particular column. But it’s a promise I found that I could not keep. Like anyone who has a heart and who has heard of the murders at the school in Uvalde, Texas, my heart is breaking. That kind of evil takes our breath away. Of course, the national media seem to have plenty of breath, plenty of bandwidth, and plenty of ink available. And, of course, they have to report it. But I’m not convinced that wallowing in it is necessary. Many...
In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, a chapter utterly amazing from its very first verse, we have, among much else, the story of Christ’s calling of his first disciples (apostles). Two of them did some of the greatest work of their lives right then. Andrew went and told his brother Peter about Jesus and, literally, brought him to Christ, saying, “We have found the Messiah!” And when Jesus, on the next day, himself calls Philip (who was, like Andrew and Peter, from...
