Bittersweet Farm
You don’t have to own a lot to be happy. Drink in everything good and beautiful around you—enjoy anything worthy around you. Sometimes, maybe often, things are much easier to enjoy if you don’t own them—if you are not responsible for them. I’ve often taken great pleasure walking the hills another man owned but rarely visited. A public park really belongs to me alone and no one else for the moments I sit in solitude by the water’s edge and enjoy the slanting evening light.
All the talk on the news today is the blizzard of historic proportions that is about to hit the east coast but this morning here in Michigan the sky is clear and the sun is shining. The snow storm passed south of us last night and we are cheerily about our business.
Here’s a story that I hope will warm your heart on this cold winter day.
This morning on my desk in front of me is a handwritten note written on a small yellow legal pad.
Our third-born is a son name Charles Kenneth. Chuk manages a business in the Grand Rapids area but he was here for the weekend. Sunday he sang at Evangel to close the service. I’m preaching on angels and he sang one of my favorite songs by Fernando Ortega: Jesus, King of Angels.
Last night I left for evening church and Chuk had to get back across the Mitten for work in the morning. After the service I had a meeting and got in late. My study at home doubles as a guest room. I noticed that Chuk had left a hand-written note on my desk before he left. I looked for long time at the simple words of love scratched out on the little yellow pad there. As simple as they were they warmed my heart.
This morning I read them again. Again, my mind went back over the nearly thirty years he has been my boy. What a treasure he is to me. I think of Chuk continually. I love him deeply. I enjoy him thoroughly. He is bright, witty, full of ideas, generous and loving.
A lot of things in my life need improving. I have goals and ambitions and even some regrets. I have plans and hopes and dreams. I have fears and failures and frustrations. I have responsibilities, deadlines, and people who depend on me. In the middle of all those things that can press in on my heart I have a fine son who loves me and wants to spend time with me.
That fact, affirmed on a little piece of yellow legal pad, warms my heart like the bright January sunshine streaming though the windows this morning and I thank God for it.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
January 26, 2015
I stumbled on this story surfing EricWoods site. I love stories about God’s provision like this. Take a minute to watch the story.
Today (January 16, 2015) a distant cousin watched his mother die. He’s a colorful and interesting man. He lives in a distant state and I have been watching his thoughtful posts on social media while he has been watching his mother decline. Today she died. He wrote; “She has slipped the surly bonds of earth and sailed away…”
I recognized it as a quotation and went searching to find this fascinating and poignant story behind the poem:
“High Flight”
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He came to Britain and flew in a Spitfire squadron.
One day while he was flying at a very high altitude, he was suddenly inspired to write a poem … which he did, right there in the cockpit of his airplane, in flight. After he landed, he turned the paper over and wrote a letter to his parents that said, “I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed.”
This is the poem:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor e’er eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
On December 11, 1941, he died in a crash during a training flight. He was 19 years old.
The dark cloud of God’s judgment hangs over our nation today.
In our time the official courts and institutions of government and civil life in our land are governing without serious regard for the law of God. The law of God no longer appears to be a factor in the rulings of our courts. The law of God no longer appears to be an appropriate subject for teaching in our schools. The law of God is no longer considered relevant in the musings of our legislative bodies. God’s law is set aside by most as a cumbersome anachronism. Collectively the popular culture and cultural influencers seem a little embarrassed by the law of God. When someone tries to bring the law of God into play in conversation “thinking people” cough, look away, and practice social inattention until someone mercifully changes the subject back to sports or weather or fashion or celebrity gossip.
In our culture we are forming collective opinions and convictions that are directly counter to the clear and unmistakable statements of Scripture regarding human sexuality, human flourishing, and matters of life and death.
As a whole Americans consider people of the conviction that God’s law is still binding on men and nations, a little out of touch, willfully ignoring the fact that can be easily demonstrated from history that the men who founded this great country were, for the most part, men of resolute belief in the Bible, the God of the Bible, and the law of God as expressed in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
Now we are scrambling to accommodate every kind of belief or suspicion or disbelief or point of view no matter how bizarre or perverse. Regardless of the fact that the Word of God locates the basis of false religions in demonic activity, we try to re-write our history with and open-minded pluralism that the founders never intended and the Lord directly condemns.
We officially and covenantally endorse sexual perversion, and protect a whole industry that profits from ending the lives of pre-born babies unable to speak for themselves. Now we wonder why a dark cloud of terrorism, false religion, economic disaster, societal decline, senseless violence, crime, family disintegration, and educational collapse hangs over our heads.
But our founders knew and clearly stated that a nation cannot flourish without God’s aid and His favor and no nation can disregard God and set aside his law and expect His blessing and protection.
On June 28, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin made this statement:
I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?
We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages …
I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.
God’s people must unite in prayer, resolve to live holy lives, build godly homes and churches, be a prophetic voice, and proclaim the gospel so others can join them in an Ark of Safety before they are drowned in the rising waters of God’s judgment.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
January 16, 2015
“You can’t bury someone without ceremony like you open a can of tuna fish.”
When Bill died, I was asked to preach his funeral. We had never met. When that happens it always makes me sad. You really should have your funeral preached by someone who knew you.
Bill must have been a nice fellow though. Sometime years ago before anyone remembered he had seen fit to join the church. I visited his daughter to plan the funeral service and burial. His daughter sitting across the room seem nice enough. She was clearly the responsible type with a tidy, modest yard, a neat yard, a rust-free car, and good manners. What left me a little cold was the way she talked about her father. I’m sure she loved him and missed him but you couldn’t tell by the way she talked about him. I felt like a police detective trying to ring the facts out of a stubborn witness.
This was going to be hard. A funeral is not a cold, utilitarian thing like getting a license at the Secretary of State. You can’t bury someone without ceremony like you open a can of tuna.
At a funeral people expect eulogy. Eulogy means praise–saying good things. A funeral with a vacuum where eulogy belongs just never seems quite right no matter how much orthodox Christian truth is communicated. In the air of a funeral without eulogy hangs a dissonance that everyone can feel. Over the years I have learned that including eulogy in a funeral is like the satisfaction of resolving a chord in music. If I had to rely on Bill’s daughter everyone would leave his funeral with a sense the something important was missing. ??After interviewing her for about a half hour I was about to give up and settle for sort of generic memorial. What else can I do? That’s when I stumbled on the clue.??I asked; “Did Bill have any friends around here?”
“Well, just a lady friend,” she replied. I got the address of Bill’s lady friend and paid her a visit. She was a delightful and colorful little lady, lively and verbal. She supplied me with all the notes quotes and anecdotes I needed. Now I was getting somewhere. I knew I would be able to insert enough feeling, warmth, and emotion to comfort those who would gather to pay their respects to Bill. We would be able to do his memory justice.
During our conversation she said something that I’ve always thought I was a little parable of Christian cooperation. She said; “You know, Bill really couldn’t see very well but he had his driver’s license. My eyes are pretty good but I can’t drive so together we got around pretty well.”
I almost choked on my tea at the idea of an elderly man who couldn’t see well aiming his big car along the road at the direction of an elderly woman who couldn’t drive. Because of their age there are some things they couldn’t do but they didn’t let them that ground them. They learned to work together and combine strengths and weaknesses. As a result they managed to get around pretty well.
God designed us all with built-in and abilities and weaknesses so that we would not have an independent spirit. To live life well requires teamwork and cooperation. We were not designed to function independently. It’s that way in life and in the family and it’s that way in the Church of Jesus Christ.
Once a little boy named David you arrived late for Sunday School. When the teacher saw him she was trouble. Little fella’ had only one arm. Knowing primary children as she did she feared some of the other children would make insensitive comments or ask awkward questions.
She had no idea the little boy was coming and no opportunity prepare the class. All went without incident until, without thinking, she decided to close the class with the little finger play;
Here is the church
Here is the steeple
Open the doors
And see all the people
It was too late before she realized the mistake she had made. Little Davey would be humiliated and left out. With a lump in her throat she looked toward Davey. To her surprise he was grinning from ear to hear. His right hand was locked together with the left-hand of a little girl next to him. The little girl chirped;
“Look, teacher, Davey and I are building the church together!”
Paul wrote to the church in Corinth; “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.” (1 Corinthians 12:18)
He wrote: “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.” (1 Corinthians 12:4–7)
It might surprise us the places we could go if combine our gifts, pool our strengths, and share our resources.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
January 15, 2014
Recent Comments