Bittersweet Farm

What A Wonderful Child

It’s a sweet time of year at Bethel Church. I was the first to arrive on Sunday morning. It was just after dawn. I stepped into the quiet auditorium. A wreath was glowing on the brick wall east of the pulpit. A Christas tree stood on the west side. I plugged in the lights and sat for a while in silent prayer. Soon the people would come and bring the place to life. I prayed for the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit among us. Later Sunday morning we launched a new series: What A Wonderful Child; Five Names of Jesus. Sunday’s message was on the name Emmanuel; God with Us. How wonderful it is to know that if we know the Lord we are never alone. Because Jesus came, God is with us.

God is with us when we are threatened, oppressed, mistreated.
—God is with us when we are troubled/anxious/worried/depressed
—God is with us when we are tempted
—God is with us when we feel alone or abandoned or misunderstood or unappreciated
—God is with us when when we are sad or discouraged or depressed
—God is with us when we are unsure of the future
—God is with us when we are under-resourced… poor… needy… pressured oppressed
—God is with us when we are bored—empty—have a weak sense of purpose…
—God is with us when we are unaware of his presence…

It’s that time of the year. Don’t forget. Because Jesus Came, God is with us.

Here is the whole message on video:

Thanksgiving Weekend Out on Bittersweet

A thin snow covers the ground out on Bittersweet this morning, but it won’t last. The spirit of Thanksgiving lingers. Holly, Aiden, and Bella left to return to Oregon. (Holly’s Jesse had business in the middle-east). Wes, Dylan, and Haley arrived from Texas the next day. We had Thanksgiving at Kyle and Elizabeth’s in Grand Rapids. It was a happy day. Elizabeth and the ladies prepared an abundance of food. Kyle kept a fire blazing on the hearth all day. I looked long into the fire. The chatter and antics of the grandchildren tumbling around filled my heart with warmth and joy. God has given me a deeply grateful heart. I see no reason not to extend the season of thanks all the way to Christmas Eve. Can I recommend Thanksgiving to you? It is good for our souls. So good. Thanksgiving never really has to end, does it? Let it linger.

This month you will be receiving Christmas greetings from friends and family, Christmas wishes and Christmas blessings. Let me give you one now to think about until those beautiful cards begin to arrive: I wish for you a quiet, peaceful, thoughtful December. I’m praying I can lead the people of Bethel into a deep thoughtfulness this year. I want to practice that myself. A quiet heart. Contentment with what I have and where God has placed me and what God has led me to do. Rest in the righteousness of Christ which is mine by grace through faith.

I’m a child of God. I’m a follower of Jesus. I’m a husband. I’m a dad. I’m a grandfather. I’m a simple Village Parson and that is a lot and that is enough.

Bittersweet Farm
December 2, 2019

The driveway was full out on Bittersweet Farm on Friday. We had a Thanksgiving meal with a big bunch of our family. The ground was covered with snow. It made things festive and created a holiday feel. When the families come over there are toddlers and babies and small children everywhere. Our hearts are filled with love and with thanksgiving for God unwavering kindness and mercy.

My message at Bethel Sunday was aimed at things that darken the human spirit. It was entitled A Dozen Ways to Be Happier. I will attach it to this post. Maybe it will cheer you up a bit!

Today I added some very special books to my personal library. Most of my books have a story behind them. Here is one of those stories about one of those books.

Books and Poems and Words

I love to putter among my books. Ideas come to me then, sermons, articles, and stories. Memories spring into my mind and heart among my books in the soft light of my study.
Before I began to build my own library, at about 14 years old, I would spend long hours on Sunday afternoons puttering around my dad’s library. One Sunday afternoon I found a book of poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson. I read “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “The Eagle,” and “Crossing the Bar.”

Dad is thinning out his library these days and I discovered it among the ponderous commentaries and theological works he gave me. He added this to his library when I was ten. Now it is a part of mine. In 1968 it sold for 35 cents, but it is a treasure to me now. I was an easily-distracted, hyper-active kid, but took time one Sunday afternoon to taste the rhythm and rhyme of words set to poetry. It was one of the many ways God used to make me a “word man.”

For forty years I have made my mark and fed my family and paid the bills and tried to be a blessing to others with written and spoken words. Words from the pulpit. Words of counsel and encouragement. Teaching words. Words to lead in a multitude of meetings. Words in messages at camps and conferences and words across the table between messages. Words when people are born and when they die. Words to dedicate infants and words at baptisms. Words for when they graduate and words for when they die. Words typed and hand-written. Words whispered and words proclaimed. Good news words and warning words. Commending words and even sometimes words of rebuke and correction. Words over coffee or a shared meal. Words arranged for maximum impact and long retention.

Proverbs records: “From the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is satisfied by the yield of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits.” (Proverbs 18:19-20)

Words are powerful things. May God help us use them artfully, thoughtfully, and lovingly. Now I’ve gotten wordy, I suppose.

Bittersweet Farm
November 18, 2019

Koselig

It frosted hard out on Bittersweet Farm this week for the first time this fall. We’ve had a couple snows already. Thursday morning I drove over to Plymouth to speak for the Baptist Convention of Michigan Leadership Conference and the ground and branches were covered with a thin layer of snow. Still some of the trees were bright with color. This week the last of the leaves came down except some of the stubborn oaks.

It’s “shirt-jacket” weather. I have a fleece-lined buffalo-plaid shirt-jacket that I keep near my writing desk up in the southeast corner of the house. It was a gift from our son Daniel and his wife Katelynn. I’m wearing it right now. Hope, Hannah, and Dale bought me one for my birthday that hangs at the top of the basement steps. I have worn it for the whole “leaf-blowing” season this year. It’s lined with thick fleece and has quilt-lined arms and handy pockets. It is heirloom-quality, outdoor, shirt-jacket. The Norwegians would call it “Koselig” (Pronounced kinda “Koose-u-lee” or “Koosh-lee”). A shirt jacket on a cool fall night is cozy, comfy, Koselig. It’s like a mug of coffee or a fire crackling and a favorite book on a winter night. It’s like a meal and a warm conversation with a friend. It’s like bundling up for a walk. It’s like stepping out on the porch as the moon rises into the bare trees east of the house like it did last night. It’s like the feeling you get when geese or cranes fly over at dusk, calling to each other as they fly. Koselig. You know what I mean.

I told Lois she needs to make a Koselig Candle but I discovered that it’s alread been done: Koselig Candle Company

A New Jeep on Bittersweet Farm

We have a new Jeep in the family. Hope owns a Wrangler now. When Hannah and Dale are here it looks like a Jeep lot now.

“Mitfordly”

Some of Bethel’s finest servants sit in the back row every Sunday. They keep an eye on things and miss very little. The Back Row Ladies at Bethel and salt-of-the-earth. They are the heart and soul of the church.

This year my birthday landed on a Sunday. This is a smiling providence for a pastor. There were songs and cards and gifts and fruit and balloons and warm, happy greetings all-around. Between Sunday School and church some of the Back Row Ladies filed into my study with one of the most thoughtful and useful gifts ever. The ladies are a part of a Monday-night card-making group. They made me dozens of home-made cards for my use in ministry. They put them is a large stationery box and presented the to me.

Jan Karon has created a fictional small town in the mountains with an small Episcopal Parish served by a pastor named Tim Kavanagh. The town in Mitford and the books are all full of warm, feel-good stories of love and kindness, of characters who really care for one-another. Mitford is a wonderful place to be. There are times that Bethel is “Mitfordly.” Sunday was one of those days.

A couple weeks ago Wayne and Scott Bliss drove out to Bittersweet Farm and they gifted me with a beautiful film of the place taken from overhead with a drone. That day when they drove away and I waved until they were out of sight, deeply grateful for their kindness. Mitfordly, you see?

I want to be Mitfordly like Pastor Tim Kavanagh.

The other day our water-heater failed. Come to think of it, it was on the cold morning when the snow first covered the ground. I called Tom McGee. Tom is a pipe-fitter and comes from hard-working, God-fearing, Jesus-loving and serving people. His dad kept the busses running at a church across town for many, many years. His mother was the secretary there for 35 years. I called Tom.

“Are you without hot water? I’ll be over tomorrow.”

He was there. A few hours later we had enjoyed some good conversation and a shopping trip to Home Depot and we were back in the hot water business. He refused to take any money for the help. When we pressed him he said, “Well, why don’t you do this. Why don’t you send an Operation Christmas Child box for each member of the household.”

Mitfordly, don’t you think.

It’s November. Thanksgiving month. It’s getting cold out there. Be Koselig and Mitfordly. Spread a little love around. It’s a warm and wonderful way to live.

Bittersweet Farm
November 10, 2019

There are two fields that lie just north of our place. I call them the “near north field” and the “far north field.” Beyond them is a woods that shelters a pond. Beyond the woods the Falling Waters Trail crosses running east and west.

Farmer Clark took the beans off the fields north of Bittersweet this golden October afternoon. I had a lunch meeting at Spring Arbor University and took the back road there and back to enjoy the autumn afternoon. In the late afternoon I took George, the Red Jeep, out for a drive through the countryside to watch the start of the harvest.

This time of year I always think back to the October our family returned to the rolling farmland of southeastern Ohio from living in Oklahoma City. I close my eyes and remember the bus ride home from school out to the farm on winding gravel roads under arches of trees bright with color. The air was cool. The sky October-Blue. My little brothers were waiting in the yard in flannel shirts with a football.

Even more than that I remember the autumn of 1994. From 1990 to 1994 we lived in a farmhouse on a dead end road in a peaceful, remote valley in Ohio. About that time on one of our jaunts up into the Ohio Amish Country—Holmes County—I happened on a book that would be on my life-list of favorites. The book was written by an Amish farmer and arranged according to the seasons. Each of the essays was based on something he had observed on his small farm in Ohio. He called the book Great Possessions.

I kept it on my night table and every night before bed I would read a chapter and close my eyes and lie in bed and think about what I had read and wonder why it moved me so deeply. We knew we would never be able to purchase the place we were leasing, but walking in the snow on a hill overlooking the farmhouse on a winter night, warm light within spilling out on the snow, something stirred within me and I prayed that one day, if it be God’s will, we could have a modest country place of our own.

What I did not know is that I would move to a small town then, of all places to a hotel in downtown Flint, then a working suburb of Detroit before, as a smiling providence to counter a season of slander and betrayal, God would give us our own farm house in the country.

Now on October nights I don’t long for the country or the moonrise or the fragrance of burning leaves. I don’t pine for the sight and the sound of geese passing before the moon. I don’t imagine a silver brook running under scarlet maples or whitetail deer grazing in the field. I don’t imagine that and dream of that and long for that and pine for that, I experience that every single day of my life.

I don’t go off to camp to visit someplace beautiful. I go off to camp to visit someplace else that is beautiful. To experience the beauty of the countryside I just get up in the night and watch the moon out the bathroom window, or sit in a rocker on one of our porches, or I go out and mow or trim or rake or gather windfall limbs and build a fire.

Sitting in my reading spot in the southwest corner of the living room I page through my original copy of Great Possessions and come upon a receipt used as a book mark. It is from Dale’s Cardinal in Danville, Ohio. It is dated November 24, 1994. It was a Monday, my day off. At about quarter of two in the afternoon I bought nine dollars and twelve cents worth of groceries. It looks like we had goulash that night and maybe cookies for dessert.

The trees on the hills between Danville and Apple Valley Road were bare by then. It was 50 degrees and sunny as we drove the undulating hills to home. The temperature dropped down to 37 that night. The furnace would have kicked on. There were only eight of us at the time. Wes would come along in a little less than a month and Hope would complete our family five years later after we moved to Michigan.

A friend of mine and a teacher in my grad school taught me this: “When God is going to do something He puts a prayer burden on the heart of a believer.” This is one of the reasons that I have learned to pay attention to the things that I have a strong inclination to pray about. You never know the plans God’s has for you. These are some of the things that I’ve been thinking about home alone with a favorite old book on a cool autumn night.

Bittersweet Farm
October 15, 2019