Bittersweet Farm

I wrote this just before bed sometime last week: After dinner I spent some time in my wooden rocker on the evening porch right under the hummingbird feeder. I came in at dusk when the sky was blushing pink to write a little before sleep overtakes me. I rose early this morning and I’m a good kind of tired. I think I will sleep with the window open to the night air.

My swanky weather app tells me that the overnight low will be around 65 and we will likely awaken to the rumble of thunder in the morning. Lois has been away for most of a week. She has returned home so I will have company to talk and to pray and to feel a welcome presence in the bed beside me while I sleep.

Hope came home joyful tonight with news of an answer to a need she never really prayed for but only thought about. Her eyes were bright as she told the story and there was a little catch in her voice. We talked at dinner about how our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we even ask him. (Matthew 7:7-11).

“God remind us to turn our worries into prayers. You’re a good, good Father. That’s who you are.”

Sunday morning we had a visiter at Bethel from Virginia. He was a truck driver staying in a local hotel, looking for a church to attend. He told me his story. He was born in Northern Iraq, and used to be Muslim. One day, on a spiritual search, he heard in a Christian Church that God is loving like a good father. He said; “I am a father. My heart is full of love for my children. When I heard of the love of God I became a Christian.”

I told his story at Bethel Sunday morning and the people celebrated with him.

It’s true. He is a good Father, a good, good Father.

Bittersweet Farm
May 27, 2019

Lois was out of town this weekend helping our daughter Heidi and our grandchildren Keira and Koen. Hope was home with me and our faithful Hazard. Saturday I met with the elders early in the morning. Later in the day was a memorial service for Bill Younkin, one of our Bethel men. The rest of the day I spent preparing for my message on Sunday morning to the Bethel family.

In the evening Hope and I spent nearly two hours together out on the summer porch watching the sun go down the sky, looking off into the south woods, savoring a warm spring evening, hearing the call of the Barred Owl we so love off in the woods. We talked. Mostly I helped her prepare her story for children’s church–Bethel Kids. We thought hard and talked long about how to help little children see their way from the Old Testament stories to the cross and beyond–How the stories of the Old Testament point to Jesus and the ultimate storyline of the Bible. It was sweet to be with her there and talk deeply of the things of the Lord.

The older I get the more I am aware that the greatest pleasure to my heart is conversation with others who love the Lord. A neighbor we had not yet met stepped across to greet us and we stood out in the drive until the sun nearly set getting acquainted. She was a delightful lady with a shared love for Jesus.

This week I would like to tell the story I alluded to in last week’s Bittersweet Farm Journal:

Today I would like to tell you a story I have cherished in my heart but not put in print for over eight years.

On our Israel tour in the spring of 2011, Lois and I stayed with our group for a few nights at the Nof Ginosar Kibbutz on the north end of the Sea of Galilee. The dinning commons was on the second floor of a building with large glass windows that faced south down the Sea of Galilee.

One night we ate with a professor and his wife. He was a professor at Christian Seminary in America. They were good dinner companions. I peppered the professor with questions. It was a lively discussion but at one point it was clear we lost the interest of the ladies. I changed the subject.

A new book had come out about that time and the release of the book created a stir of publicity and controversy. The book was by a West-Michigan pastor named Rob Bell and it questioned the existence of hell. I asked the professor what he thought about the book.

“Well,” he said; “I visited Mars Hill (Rob Bell’s church at the time) and I thought the layout and the music were odd but I really have no problem with theology.”

Bell’s book questioned the reality of hell. It skated close to a kind of universalism. I was not at all orthodox or true to the teaching of Scripture. My wheels started to turn.

“You’ve read the book?” I asked.

“Yes I have.”

“Did I understand the book that he doubted the existence of hell and suggested a type of universalism–that eventually God would save everyone in the end, even those who rejected Jesus while they were living?”

“Well, I don’t really see a problem with his theology.” He repeated.

Things got quiet at the table. Things seemed to get quiet all over the restaurant.

I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t want to be impolite or argue with the professor. I was not sure how that would go. His wife seemed a little uncomfortable. I considered changing the subject, but I felt like I should say something.

Then Lois spoke.

“Well, when I was a little girl we moved from Kentucky to Michigan. We found a little church in our neighborhood that we liked. The pastor of that little neighborhood church believed in hell and he preached about it. That is how I got saved. I don’t think I would be saved if my pastor had not warned me about hell.”

No theological footwork could take the power out of Lois’s brief and sincere testimony of salvation. Nothing more really needed to be said.

We had a pleasant dinner there overlooking the land where Jesus walked. The land where, when Jesus taught, He regulary warned of the reality of hell more than anyone else.

We finished our dinner and our dessert and coffee and strolled back to our quarters in the gathering dusk.

Back in Michigan it was still winter, but here in Galilee spring had fully arrived. The beautiful land was rife with growing things and lush with flowers, grass and fruit trees in blossom. The land was a migratory pathway for birds returning along the east shore of the sunny Mediterranean.

As evening fell and we walked along I was grateful for Lois, and her straightforward, simple, sincere faith. I was proud of her conviction and her polite directness. She was not disrespectful, but she was in no way intimidated by the opinions of a lettered man. Her faith is a simple faith in the plain teaching of the Bible. This faith, by God’s good grace we have passed on to each of our eight children.

Many in their psuedo-sophistication have managed to explain-away the plain teaching of the Bible and what they have left is powerless to convert sinners and build holy lives, powerless to deliver souls from hell.

That night I lay in bed beside my little wife and I was reminded that a person with an argument is never at the mercy of a person with an experience with God.

Bittersweet Farm
May 20, 2019

Last week I enjoyed a three-day pastor’s conference with Leo Cumings (Bethel’s pastor for 23 years) and my brothers Kevin and Nathan, our brother-in-law Jim, and a nephew, Zach. It was an enriching conference. I wrote about it here. I worked hard on Thursday and spent my day off Friday “birding” with my friend David Parsons. We visited “The Biggest Week in Birding.”

Spring is coming slowly out on Bittersweet Farm. It is the 12th of May and this morning I noticed the furnace running. The leaves are budding into a beautiful canopy of green. The white and pink dogwoods and purple redbuds are opening. Lilacs are flowering. Hope and her boyfriend Tim were out on the evening porch the other night and heard the call of the Barred Owl from the woods across the road. There are other noises in the dark that I hope to be able to identify some day.

It’s Mother’s Day in America. Lois was/is a mother of eight. That is not a misprint. She bore eight children into the world. I had a front-row seat for the last almost 40 years to watch her serve and work and cook and clean and organize and forgive and love and listen and teach and work and work and work, oh, and did I mention, work?

She is loyal. She is always working to make a little money to help out. She never let the children leave the house in an unpresentable way. She never let anyone ever go hungry. I have stories I could tell that would make grown men cry of this woman who is not at all afraid of letting you know exactly how wrong you are, but she would not let you go hungry. I always tell people, if I left an important file at home I would never call her and ask her to bring it to me. I would call her and tell her I was hungry. She would offer to bring me food and then I would ask her to pick up the file on the way and bring it along with my food.

One day I was an hour from home and had no way to buy lunch. I went to a favorite book store to spend some time and distract me from my hunger. I felt a feminine presence and a soft hand on my back and heard a familiar voice. I turned to see Lois standing there. She had come into a bit of money and she drove an hour away and an hour back home to see to it that I would not have to miss lunch.

She made clothes for the girls. She sacrificed so we could get to our home-education conference every year. She did whatever needed to be done to get our family the conference that was so important to us at the time. I taught all the children to be readers, but she taught all of them to read.

This year we were blessed to fly out to Oregon and spend a week of vacation with our daughter Holly and her family after Holly had a baby girl (Miss Bella Allene). Every night she prepared a beautiful meal and special dessert and coached Holly in nursing. It was wonderful to be there and see her simple mountain-woman ways and, of course, enjoy the meals. The other night one of our daughter Heidi was ill, she got in the car late in the evening and drove five hours to her home to be with her and nurse her to health.

Around Bittersweet Farm she is constantly making home. She is reclaiming things, making candles, taking pictures to support her hobbies and interests, plotting vintage shows with her sister and puttering around with things that bring beauty to our lives. She has simple tastes.

As a pastors wife, she is quick to remind me of my duties, even when I don’t feel I need it. There are many times over the last 40 years we have been in the ministry that she has pointed out a needy parishioner I might have overlooked. My attention to them was timely and God used Lois to lead me to be in the right place at the right time. We are in a beautiful season of fellowship and flourishing right now at Bethel Church, but there have been times over those four decades that people have been fickle, or unkind, unfair or downright depraved or cruel in their treatment of me. She is not shy about letting me know if I need correction, but she is loyal with a fierce loyalty.

She is not quick to speak publicly but she would never deny her Lord and what He has done for her. When I call on her to give a testimony the whole church grows silent and we all learn things about her heart that we didn’t know. I once saw her, in a few simple, logical sentences silence a professor who was unconvinced of the reality of hell. It’s a story I love to tell. Ask me some day.

I could write more but I promised to take her to ice cream and she just called up the stairs and said; “It’s time to go.”

Bittersweet Farm
May 12, 2019 (Mother’s Day)