The Latest News From Out on Bittersweet
A week from Sunday it will be July and no summer in my life has ever flown so swiftly past. Next week I will make a holy pilgrimage to preach at Barakel. This week all the children are coming in. This is a rare and wonderful thing. We have a family wedding on Friday in South Bend. On Saturday the plan is for the whole clan to enjoy a walk out to the Grand Haven Light for sunset like we described in my first book Sunset on Summer.
Out here on Bittersweet Farm it is impossible to describe the beauty of the month of June. The day begins when the sun rises over the trees east of the farm. The trees are all wearing their canopies of rich green and the countryside is covered with growing things. the grass grows swiftly. Keeping Bittersweet Farm isn’t really farming, because our only crops are grass and flowers and our only livestock is Hazard, the Wonder-Yorkie. Keeping the farm is a little more like grooming a park, but it’s a delightful hobby and rewarding and a good excuse to be out in the fresh air and sun. I have a good tractor with a 54-inch deck for mowing and a nice hydraulic bade for plowing the snow.
There are about 50 trees on Bittersweet Farm not including dozens growing over the stone wall on the west property line that runs along the border between Summit Township and Spring Arbor Township. Bittersweet is in Summit.
About 25 of the trees growing on Bittersweet Farm are Walnuts, the rest are mostly Maple and a couple Oak. The two acres of Bittersweet Farm are a rectangle long-end running north and south. It is high on the north and south ends and low in the middle and the walnut grove grows low center of the property. The house and barn are in the south-west quarter of the rectangle.
The air is alive with birdsong especially in the hour after dawn and the hour before sunset—the golden hours. Beginning at dusk the fireflies begin to blink and hover over the laws and fields. The way the land is laid over the earth creates an amphitheater-effect. Sounds carry beautifully. So when I play my harmonica on the porch at night or whistle or play the guitar the sound is lively. On a good evening at dusk the birdsong quiet and the Owls begin to call. Barred Owls call from the forest across the road south of the farm. It’s a loud, haunting beautiful sound.
If you have been paying attention you know that the little farmhouse on Bittersweet was built with two porches. Hope rises early and brews coffee and goes out on the east-facing porch to read her Bible and have a time of quiet. She likes to call that porch the Sunrise Porch. Almost every evening the three of us and whatever guests visit spend the last hour or so of daylight out in the south-facing porch, or the front porch. I like to call it the Evening Porch. Lois has splash both porches with color and beauty using hanging pots of flowers.
A year ago was the summer of travel and preaching and camps and the summer of the Red Jeep Journey and the Red Jeep Journal. This summer is the summer of Bethel—just staying in town and serving my church. I have only scheduled one week of summer camp this year. I’m preaching and teaching and coaching and leading and encouraging and comforting and challenging and praying and counseling and getting to know the families of Bethel and their stories.
Why We Do What We Do
In the ministry at Bethel we often have a “…why we do what we do…” moment. We’ve been having quite a few lately.
A few weeks ago I drove back to the Downriver and officiated at a weeding for a couple who came to follow Christ when we pastored there. A week ago Sunday we baptized them here at Bethel. They testified of their joy and deliverance from bondage to drugs and alcohol. They have been clean and sober for five years now. They attend Bethel every Sunday. There was much joy in the church when they followed Jesus in Baptism.
Last week another family we met and baptized in the Downriver came out to visit Bethel, Dennis and Shanon Rosales with their delightful daughters Divinna and Dempsi. Divinna played her guitar and sang the we rejoiced at what God has done in their lives. When I met Dennis he told me with uncommon bluntness that he had no patience with “churchies” and now, he says; “I guess I am one now.” Dennis has been a great friend and a great help to me. God has been at work in the Rosales Family in a beautiful way. They love the balcony at Bethel when they get out this way.
I should sign-off for now. I think I smell coffee brewing and the house stirring to live downstairs. The fun is about to begin.
Ken Pierpont
Bittersweet Farm
Summit Township, Michigan
June 20, 2018