This Sunday, the Lord willing, I will be preaching in First Baptist Church, Refugio. Currently, their football team is ranked # 1 in 2AA in Texas. This is nothing new for the Bobcats.
Refugio has about 3,000 residents. They are the County seat of Refugio County. That area is steeped in Texas History. Before the coming of other peoples the Karankawa Indians had a permanent village there. Spanish explorers heard of the village and in 1795 the Nuestra Senora del Refugio Mission was built, It operated until 1830. In 1831 James Power and James Hewetson acquired the rights to the old mission building and the villa of Refugio was established.
It went through growing pains, like many other struggling villages in those days. The Civil War brought a decline when the town almost disappeared. In 1869 the county seat was moved to St. Mary's and then on to Rockport. In 1871 Aransas County was separated from Refugio County so the county seat came back to Refugio.
By 1884 the population had grown to 1,000. There was a Catholic and Baptist church, a convent, a parochial school, two public schools, (one for whites one for blacks) and two hotels. They desperately needed a railroad. They paid a $30,000.00 "bonus" to get the Saint Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway to come through the city.
Like other places in Texas the discovery of oil in 1928 brought another boom. By 1930 the population had grown to more than 2,000. In 1950 they had more than 4500. Even the city had oil wells, bringing in much needed revenue.
Today Refugio and the county are experiencing another boom from the oil and gas industry. When we have rains there is cattle raising and some farming.
To drive about the old city you can see some homes that were elegant in their day. Some of them are sitting empty and falling apart as forgotten history.
Towns are a reflection of people. Some live and grow and thrive. They have vision and hope and goals and purpose. Others lack those things and shrivel up and die. Some folks live like that, leaving little to mark the land that they were ever here.
What permanent mark on God's landscape have you etched out or are carving on each day? Paul had a deep and abiding goal through his faith He said it this way: "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain". That is a challenging goal for Believers to seek.
