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Is Mitford Real?
Sometimes life can just crush you. It can break your heart. There are seasons disappointment can be so oppressive that you wonder how you can go on. I’ve had a bit of pain and disappointment in my life over the years. Sometimes to buffer the pain of life I have visited the little village of Mayberry (the setting for the old Andy Griffith television series). Sometimes I have visited Walton’s Mountain. In the last twenty years I have returned over and over again to Jan Karon’s village of Mitford in the mountains of North Carolina to try to learn and remember how to see the goodness of God in the badness of the fallen world around me.
Mayberry and Walton’s mountain were television communities. The Village of Mitford is the fictional creation of Jan Karon. Visiting Mitford gives me a hopeful picture of what life can be like where people walk with God and walk in love.
Lately I’ve been dealing with some heartaches–some disappointments that could knock the wind out of my soul and crush my spirit. This morning I was reading an interview with Jan Karon. My eyes clouded with tears and my heart was filled with hope as I read Jan Karon’s answer to the question; “Is Mitford real?”
Is Mitford Real?
People say to me quite plaintively, “Oh, how I wish Mitford could be real.” Well, Mitford can be real. Mitford is real, but we have to do our part. Mitford doesn’t just come to us like some cute little idyllic, cozy Kincaid greeting card. We have to pitch in. We have to keep our eyes and ears and hearts open to others. We have to be willing to put ourselves out there. It doesn’t all come to us. We have to go out to it. If we go out to greet it, we will find it. Do something for somebody else. Give somebody a hug, and do it with a full heart. Listen to the humor. Watch and observe the humor in other people’s lives and in your own. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Just get out there and wade in up to your neck into that sea of humanity, which is so needy. Smile at somebody for goodness sake!
There you are. You don’t live in Mitford and neither do I but you can go out there today and smile at somebody for goodness sake!”
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 15, 2014
Playing When We Should Be Praying
The house is silent in sleep. The world outside still dark. It is the beginning of a fresh, new week. It’s a peaceful and beautiful time of the year where I live. We are in the lush green of late summer. In just a few weeks families will be preparing to send the children back to school. The economy is making a slow come-back. For the most part our lives are stable and prosperous. Things have been a little thin lately but we still have enough extra for our cable and internet and the electronic gadgets that bring them to us. We still have enough extra to get away and enjoy some time “Up-North” in the summer. Not so in much of the world.
In the east it is daytime and I wonder what news we will hear from Israel and from Iraq. Israel and Gaza are at war and Iraq is torn apart by a group of Muslim extremists that make Al-Qaeda seem moderate. They are practicing unspeakable brutality against any religious group but their own.
This morning I’m thinking about the fact that I have known nothing but freedom without fear all my life. I can study and read freely. I can speak and write freely. I can apply myself freely to any work or legal enterprise that I desire. Lois and I were free to have eight children. We were free to teach them at home. Most of all, we have the freedom to worship God publicly with others of like faith. Never once in all my life have I feared for my life or safety because I assembled with other believers to worship God.
That’s not the way it is in many parts of the world today. Every day the news reports another atrocity against Christians somewhere in the world. Here in America we are preoccupied with worship styles and preferences as if church was a religious smorgasbord offering a little something for everyone’s personal taste.
Will there come a time we will regret not taking advantage of the freedoms we have enjoyed all our lives? Will there be a time in America that Christians will repent in tears for their pettiness and for the self-centered consumer attitude we have had concerning church?
While our brothers and sisters in other lands lay down their lives for Christ, let’s gather in groups and faithfully pray for them and while we can. Let’s take advantage of the freedoms we enjoy while we can. Let’s put aside personal preferences and prepare to suffer for Biblical convictions.
There are those who threaten to raise the flag of Allah over the White House. They would love to destroy our churches and snuff out our faith. Professing Christians in America gossip more then we pray. Most of us are playing when we should be praying. If religious persecution comes to a “theatre near you soon,” as many in other parts of the world are warning us, we will live to regret the games we play that we call church.
Let’s not be feasting and playing when we should be fasting and praying.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 11, 2014
Pleasant Paths-Vance Havner
Years ago, while visiting Word of Life in Schroon Lake, New York I discovered a delightful little book by Vance Havner. I had heard Dr. George Sweeting refer to Vance Havner at Moody and the cover of the book looked so appealing to me. I bought a copy and read it in an Adirondack chair over-looking Schroon Lake.
Thank you, people of Loomis Park Baptist Church for funding my trip to Schroon Lake back in 1985. Thank you Dr. George Sweeting for your recommendation. Thank you, Vance Havner for your lifetime of faithful ministry and inspiring me to write.
Most of all, thank you, Lord for all the pleasant paths I have walked with you.
You can read the book on-line here.
During my time at Schroon Lake I discovered the pleasure of reading in an Adirondack Chair. Later I would come across one. Here is the story of how it came to be mine. You can read about what happened to it here.
Left Behind; Storytelling Podcast #14
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Did Your Mom Tell You This?
When I was a boy my mom always tried to force me to eat vegetables—spinach, oh my. Brussels’s Sprouts. Cauliflower. Broccoli. Squash. She was always buggin’ me to eat this stuff. I didn’t like any of it. Finally I reached an age where I could make all my own food choices. I began to eat what I wanted and walked away from veggies, except corn with butter and salt, potatoes with butter and salt, peas with butter and salt, green beans with butter, salt, and bacon fat—Oh, and fries. Other than that most days the only vegetables I came near were the pickles on my burger. I ate my veggies, but they were fried or made with plenty of—you know—butter and salt.
Well Mom hasn’t controlled my diet for many, many years. I eat exactly what I want in the portions that I want. To be honest, that has not been particularly good for me. I’ve been remarkably healthy, but now I’m at the age where my eating habits are catching up to me.
I go to the doctor. The first thing they do is weigh me. They act all professional about it, but they just keep bumping those weights to the right. They write on their little clip-board and they try not to act surprised. Then they check my blood pressure and my cholesterol levels. Let me save you the painful details. After I run up a healthy bill with the doctor he gives me a speech that sounds remarkably like the one my mother gave me with a few medical terms thrown in to justify the considerable expense of the visit.
You can take the medicine and enjoy the side-effects of the medicine and wash it all down every day for the rest of your miserable life with your orange juice in the morning or… you guessed it—you can eat your vegetables. Lay off all that fat-marbled meat with salt. Stop eating all those carbs with salt and butter and fat in its various and tantalizing forms. Ditch the junk food. Potato and corn chips don’t count as vegetables. A Large Coke, Bacon and Cheddar Quarter-Pounder, and a Large Fry does not constitute a balanced meal. Here is what you have to do to stay off the medicine:
Walk at least 30 minutes every day and eat brussels’s sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, squash, salad, salad, and salad with small amounts of lean meat. Meat is fine, but it is best if you consider it a garnish, not your main dish. I can save you a lot of money and embarrassment. I can save you money for drugs, weight watchers, diet pills, and snake oil.
Do what my mom told me years ago. Eat your vegetables and fruit. Get out and play a lot. Say your prayers at night. Don’t make a habit of doing wrong. When you do wrong fess up and make it right. Go to church. Did you hear me? I said go to church—I’m talking every Sunday not Christmas, Easter and when you don’t have the green to get away to the cottage. Go to church and eat your veggies.
I’m pretty sure that if you don’t eat your veggies you are likely to die young and if you know the Lord you are going to go to Heaven and they don’t have fried chicken and barbecued ribs there. You will have glorified tastes for fruit and vegetables and your mother will be sitting over there across the table from you with an “I-told-you-so” look on her face.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 5, 2014
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