F.M. Ebenezer

Drive almost any F.M. (Farm to Market) in Texas and you will find at least one. The faithful gathered there twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday in sun-backed clapboard shotgun Churches, that still dot the landscape. Step inside the quiet, cut with slanting beams and listen. Hear the soft echoes of singing from worn dusty hymnals that still gather in the stillness between the pews. See the leather-faced men, and women, that defiantly wrenched a living from sandy scrub. Veneration of those self-made-independent-men-women informs our theology. Like Noah and the other patriarchs who stood alone with God, they faced great adversity, armed with fifth Sunday singings and potlucks, unaware of the source. Meringues and casseroles lined up on folding tables beneath a straggling Live Oak, planted in belligerence, against a cobalt blue sky. Sister Harshberger’s deviled eggs always set the bar high. The next round of farmers and ranchers frolicked in the spaces between the rows of cotton that press up against the caliche parking lot and dust-coated Fords, Chevys, and Dodges; after a good year Lincolns, Plymouths, and Chryslers sprout from the same dust. These grim prophets stride out of the bleak countryside with their message of hard work and unremitting faith. They believed in a God that wanted us to be self-determining, stand on our own, and carve out our niche with one hand on the plow and the other on the Bible. They knit together the thought fabric of West Texas, a place of harsh flatness, astringent weather, and heart-aching sunsets, with the warp and woof of sweat and toil. Muleshoe, Sudan, Lazbuddie, Friona, Bovina, Shep, and countless others strewn across the landscape each have their monuments. An F.M. tour of the caprock reveals these testimonials to stolid faith and hard work. And if you pause, in the quiet glow of setting sun, they will come to you and speak of their dreams and desires, failures and hurts. Some still grow under the silent sun. Others dried up and blew away leaving only the bleached ebenezers where ghosts still gather to commiserate about this year’s cotton yield.