“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” John 16:20 (ESV)

Our congregation has recently been presented with ‘opportunities’ for sorrow, such as the death of a beloved member of the congregation, an accident which left a grandson with severe burns over his body, etc. While the above text was not planned to time with these events (at least not by this pastor), God’s timing brought this text when it was needed.

It is not common for God to allow events to bring pain and suffering in place of things we thought were for our “good.’ If we accept what God has in mind for us, He...

Continuing a seven-part special by Richard F. Kontz on a Vietnam vet he met while running the Bread of Life Christian Bookstore in 2011 through mid-2015.

As time passed, I took Don to my church one Sunday morning.  He was very impressed with the size, the music and the preaching.  Toward the end of the service, one of the Ushers came to get me. He said an older Navajo lady had asked if I could come out and talk with her — it was an emergency.

Bessie [not her real name] was in the entry way of the Church.  I recognized her from a series of Spiritual classes I had taught and she was one of the class participants.   Long story short her father was in the hospital and not expected...

Hard-working families in our state are drowning. Families should never have to choose between buying healthy groceries and paying their utility bills, but they do. Kids should be focusing on their work instead of their grumbling stomachs during school, but they cannot help it when their hard-working parents can only provide one meal a day. Workers should not have to take out payday loans for exorbitant fees to afford back-to-school supplies for their kids.

I’ve heard too many devastating stories about the challenges that New Mexico’s minimum-wage workers face, and I believe that hard-working New Mexicans deserve better.

A minimum wage increase is long overdue – it hasn’t been...

Part 3 of 3

Continued from last week.

The mining activity has basically depleted much of the underground water and caused a significant increase in multiple chronic diseases in the impacted populations.  The studies indicated that the logical place to start was in the health of children with uranium being the primary contaminant of concern along with the exposure to other mixtures of metals which can cause birth defects and life-long health issues.

The exposures can be physical, chemical, societal, medical and psychosocial.  Radiation scans in homes to the birth records and reproductive outcomes were assessed and the results included the fact that some sources of exposure include...