An Insight from Plainview, Texas

Last week, because of the declining health of my mother-in-law, Margaret Sanchez, we spent extra time there.  Alice stayed the nights in the hospital with her mother.  I would visit and talk for a while but spent quite a bit of time in a hotel. 

Looking out the hotel window which overlooked a freeway (I-27), I noticed the cars and different kinds of trucks–lots of trucks.  I guessed that this could be its own kind of entertainment–looking at the vehicles that went by, imagining the lives of the people in them. 

There’s not a lot of entertainment in Plainview.  It is a city of about 22,000 people, located between Amarillo and Lubbock on the windswept plains of the Texas Panhandle.   Like its name indicates, it is flat.  Other towns in the area also reflect the landscape: Shallowater, Levelland, Brownfield…

The main industry of Plainview is farming (wheat and cotton) and cattle.  The culture is definitely Tex-Mex. 

Its downtown has seen better days.  A lot of the storefronts are empty.  

Having grown up in southern California, I looked at places like Plainview with some fascination.  My hometown touched six other cities.  The only way you knew you were entering another city was by a sign saying: “Welcome to Whitter,” or “Welcome to Fullerton.”  In west Texas, as in most of the middle of the US, it is very different.  There is space–a lot of space–between towns.

Alice’s family stayed in Plainview, except for some temporary excursions.  I contrasted this with our own lives.  We moved around, almost always because of preparation for ministry or while in ministry.  We have lived in four states and a foreign country, and it looks like we will be moving again before too long. 

Which was preferable, to stay in one place or move around?  I didn’t know.  I could see plusses and minuses to both.  I remarked to Alice that one advantage to staying in one place is that you got to know people and they got to know you over many years.  But that wasn’t our lot. 

It brought to mind the larger idea of place.  Did it really matter where you lived?  Was one place as good as another? 

We might think some places are like paradise, thinking “If only I could live there!”  But those places might have high rent, high mortgages and the financial pressure that goes with it.  They might have traffic jams and lots of stress.  Just because you live in a ritzy town was no guarantee of happiness. 

I remember when we were in our second church, pastoring in Oxnard, California.  Oxnard itself was the most gritty and working-class city in the county–but it was in coastal southern California and there were some fancier areas nearby.  Some neighboring cities appeared to be very desirable.  One might think it would be paradise to live there.

One city in the area was Carpinteria, up the coast in Santa Barbara County.  It was a high rent place.  The church there (the one in our denomination) seemed to have it made, overlooking the ocean and in this rich city close to Santa Barbara.  But the church struggled.  It had to rent out its space to a secular daycare just to pay the bills.  The church has since closed.  Its fancy location did not save it. 

Another church, on the other side of Oxnard, was in Newbury Park.  Newbury Park was part of Thousand Oaks–another rich city.  The church there was of modern architecture set in a neighborhood of high-priced homes.  It looked like being a pastor there would be a plum assignment.  But the church struggled there too.  It was always on ‘welfare’, needing district subsidy to pay the mortgage.  It too has since closed. 

Appearances can be deceiving.  Assumptions can be deceiving.  Merely living in a desirable zip code is no guarantee of anything. 

The richest man I ever knew had every material thing one could want.  He had a house in the Hollywood Hills.  But he was the most miserable man I think I ever met. 

Meaning and happiness come in ways other than having many material things and living in a desirable city.  A person that lives in a humble town can live a rich life in the things that matter; while one who lives in a rich town may be poor in everything that matters.  1 Timothy 6:6-8 says, “But godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.   But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” 

Fulfillment comes not from where you live, but from what is within you or, better said, Who is within you–namely God.  Meaning comes from living right with your Creator and Redeemer.  That is where true riches come from, not from having an A-list address. 

Jeremiah 9:23-24 says, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me…’.”