Bittersweet Farm
Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel (Insights on Following Jesus from Philippians)
Sermon: Ordinary Examples for Extraordinary Times (Phil. 2:19-30)
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
August 9, 2020 AM
Ken Pierpont; Lead Pastor
Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel (Insights on Following Jesus from Philippians)
Sermon: Ordinary Examples for Extraordinary Times (Phil. 2:19-30)
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
August 9, 2020 AM
Ken Pierpont; Lead Pastor
Sigurd Olson was a nature writer. For inspiration he would visit his cabin on a place he called Listening Point. All his books were written in a converted garage he called the writing shack. His last written words are still typed on a sheet of paper rolled into his old typewriter: “A new adventure is coming up and I’m sure it will be a good one.”
May your last adventure be a good one.
This is Sigurd Olson’s Writing Shack:
This is the cabin on Listening Point:
Here is an interesting blog post.
On Bittersweet Farm we have a grove of walnut trees, over twenty of them. They are majestic trees that provide a rich canopy of green. They have been around a long time. If they could talk I would listen. They could tell me the history of this “Place on the Earth.” The walnut grove divides our acres in half east and west. This time of year, in the second half of summer, some of the walnut leaves turn yellow and blow down when a breeze moves upon them. It is the first hint of fall. The other night it was cool and the leaves were blowing down here-and-there. It was a reminder that cooler days are coming soon–a reminder to drink in every summery hour with ice-tea in hand and enjoy the pleasure of the rocking chair on the porch and shirt-sleeves outdoors. “Teach us to number our days and apply our hearts to wisdom…” Moses wrote in Psalm 90.
The Loon on Coles Pond
I once had a reader from Vermont write to tell me that she always dreamed of visiting Michigan. Funny, I thought. I have always dreamed of visiting Vermont.
My grandfather had and older brother named Elmer and two younger brothers, Orville and Arthur. I believe Elmer died before I was born. Orville lived in Utica. Art lived in Beaver Dam in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Now all of them have passed. He had a sister named Dorothy, who I remember and a sister named Grace who died as a child. He would marry a woman named Grace.
One of Orville’s grandsons is my cousin Jeff Pierpont. Jeff lives in a beautiful home on Cole’s Pond in Vermont. Jeff and I don’t remember ever meeting, though we may have once in our childhood. We bumped into each other on-line a few years ago. I enjoy his facebook and blog posts. He is a good writer, and evidently a pretty good cook, judging from the pictures of his food. I have an open invitation to visit him at his home on the pond. I know our conversation would reach deep into the night and the eating would be as good as the views of the lake.
My Cousin Jeff Pierpont
Coles Pond is about an hour’s drive from northwest Maine and an hour south of the Canadian border. Yesterday Jeff was out in his wooden canoe and got a beautiful picture of a loon. He was kind enough to share it with me so you all could enjoy it. A loon-sighting is a rare and wonderful occasion for me and the call of a loon on a northern lake is a worship experience. Did you know that God created the Loon to live on fish and equipped them with sharp, rearward-pointing projections on the roof of its mouth and tongue to keep a firm grip on slippery fish? What an amazing creation to hear and to see and to study.
Read Psalm 139. God created and arranges all the details of your life. You have just what you need to do what God has called you to do. With God’s help you can do whatever he commands you to do. He will have people in place and arrange circumstances in split-second timing so you can accomplish what he placed you on planet earth to accomplish.
Anyway… It’s about a thirteen hour drive to visit my cousin in Vermont. What do you think? Should I go meet him? I could take the northern route through Canada. I could return the US route through New England. I wonder if he would be open to a guest in the fall of the year when the maples are aflame with color? I imagine he is the kind of guy who would make me flapjacks with real local Vermont Maple Syrup with my morning coffee. What if I took a side-trip to visit the White Mountains of New Hampshire and drove through the Green Mountains of Vermont on the way home. All that good conversation, good eating, and all those beautiful mountain vistas, would make some good writing, wouldn’t it? I saw the loon picture and got to thinking.
Bittersweet Farm
August 10, 2020
Out on Bittersweet it has been quiet the last couple weeks. Lois and Hope went out to the Oregon coast to visit Holly and I was here on the quiet farm. There are parts of that I like, but I like it better with company. Last night I drove to the airport and picked up Lois and brought her home. The first two weeks of July I spoke at camps. The last two weeks Lois was gone. Now we are back together. The absence gave me a little time to think. Yesterday I visited a nursing home and it reminded me of something that happened over forty years ago…
She Promised A Banana
During my second year of college I preached in a nursing home once a week. I had met a girl that year. She was a freshman we were dating some. She had long dark hair and dark eyes. She was slender and very pretty. She wore pretty dresses every day and if you got near her she smelled really nice. I didn’t know much about her, but I assumed she was a believer because she was at Bible college and she was a little shy and seemed like a really nice girl.
She came with when I preached at the nursing home. We visited from room to room invited people to the meeting. One week we met a lady whose name was Edith. They struck up a conversation. I thought it was sweet that even though she was quiet she made conversation easily with the elderly woman. Edith asked her for a banana. She said, “I don’t have one tonight, but next time I come back I will bring you one.”
It make my heart happy that she was planning to return with me again. The next week on the way to the nursing home she said, “We need to get a banana for Edith.”
We stopped and we got Edith a banana.
There were a lot of things about the girl I didn’t know but I liked the things I knew. The girl was not just pretty and cute and sweet but that is what I noticed most. There were other qualities that I would discover later.
Later I discovered that she was the kind of person that would not leave an apartment with a dirty fridge or shower. I discovered that she was the kind of person who didn’t talk in a flowery way but would never think of letting you go hungry. I loved the way the sunlight played off her long, brown hair. I loved the moments when I could capture her gaze, though she would always look away quickly. Later I would discover that Intimacy was not something that came easy to her, but she would do what she promised she would do.
She has listened to me preach for over 40 years now, but she does not brag on my messages, ever. Not in forty years of messages, but she will tell me if my pants are wrinkly or your if my shoes were ratty. I would discover later that she would be fiercely loyal. That pretty little girl with the winning southern accent would end up being pretty hard on me but she would not let others mistreat me, ever. She would bear eight children and nurse them and see to it that the girls had curls on Sunday morning and the boys would have creases in their slacks and their hair parted strait and their little tummies were nice and full.
What I noticed when I met her is that she was pretty and she had a slender waist and that she lived in Ypsilanti, Michgian and that she was born in Kentucky and she had a cute southern way of talking. I would discover later that she had two “Mamaws” in the little mountain town in Kentucky where she was born. I would discover later that little mountain village and those people and their music and talk and ways were embedded deep in her soul. Later I would discover that no matte how long we live din the north nothing would ever take those things out of her soul.
I didn’t know that pretty girl could make a home warm and welcoming. I didn’t know she could make flowers grow. I didn’t know she was a good cook. I didn’t know she was creative or “crafty” or enterprising. I just thought she was really pretty and sweet and cute and had a nice tan.
I knew she had pretty legs, an adorable face, and other winning physical attributes, but I did not really know she would rather see the new piglets than be on time for church—that she would almost never be on time for church even though I would be a pastor for over forty years.
I didn’t know it at the time but she was the kind of girl that would take time to talk to old ladies and if she promised to bring you a banana, she would bring you a banana.
Bittersweet Farm
August 6, 2020
Series: Turning the Bethel Wheel (Insights from Philippians on Following Jesus and Helping Others Follow Jesus)
Title: Don’t Curse the Darkness, Be A Light (Philippians 2:12-18)
Bethel Church | Jackson, Michigan
August 2, 2020 AM
Lead Pastor Ken Pierpont
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