Bittersweet Farm

(In 2005 I wrote this letter to my mother for Mother’s Day)

Thank you for all you have done for so many years for all of us and for Dad. You have put music in our lives every day. You have put bread on the table.

Above all, thank you for treasuring Christ since you were in the third grade every day. People search musty books and travel to remote places to sit at the feet of sages to discover evidence of God or form arguments for the existence of God. I never had to do that. All I had to do was look in the next room and I could always see Him in you.

Thank you for doing all the things you had to do to make our home a fine, Christian home. God has rewarded you with 31 grandchildren so far. Imagine the far-reaching impact of your quiet faithfulness in small things. It will touch the lives of thousands if Jesus’ return is not soon.

I hope you know this morning that I love you and appreciate you and cherish you. Thank you for your song. Thank you for your constant instruction and conviction about the things of Christ. Thank you for maintaining high standards all your life that clearly flowed from a heart of love for Christ. Thank you for making me clothes, meals, even making my bed. (I still feel guilty about that one).

I was traveling with the boys the other day on the way to a speaking assignment and quizzing them on basic Bible knowledge. I found myself praying that I could instruct my children in the Bible and theology as well as you did us. Thank you so much for all those JOY Clubs and Good News Clubs and Five Day Clubs and after school teachings. I have such a love for stories and for singing and for the Bible. I know that you are largely responsible for that.

I remember doing the funeral of an elderly woman one day. At the close standing at the head of the casket her son was the last one to say goodbye before the casket was closed. He stood and wept and then, suddenly, without warning grabbed his mother’s body and began to pull it up and cried out over and over again in a pitiful voice, “O mother, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me mother, I’m sorry.”

His pitiful cries rang in my ears for a long time. I don’t want to come to the end of my life and leave the important things unsaid. If any good comes from my life, I owe it to you and Dad. Not just because I came into this world through you but because of your clear, continual, Christian testimony that flowed out of the fountain of love for Christ within you.

I wish I could buy you expensive gifts today and be with you and take you to a fine restaurant. I wish I could afford to take you to some lovely place that you would enjoy and remember for the rest of your life. I will tell you this, Mom. I want you to know that I am going to do my best with all my heart to see that your grandchildren carry the same temperature of faith that is in you to their children, your great-grandchildren. One day we will have riches that are beyond the scope of our finite imagination. One day we will travel to a place so beautiful and wonderful beyond human description and we will be together forever there with all the rough edges taken off, all the pain and sadness of sin lifted forever, and to think in the presence of the One whom we have loved without seeing for so long.

Thank you most of all for making Him real to my heart. I love you, Mom.

Ken (Mother’s Day – May 8, 2005)

Well, there you go. Now you have almost a week to write your mom a letter or find her a nice gift, or plan a visit to make her Mother’s Day special.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
May 5, 2008

It’s a nice warm day in the Downriver by Sunday morning the lilacs will have burst into bloom here at the church. While spring is bursting into life around us it seems that we have been visited with dying of late. On the way home from the church to Granville Cottage there is a cemetery. There are at least a half dozen fresh mounds there. It’s good to be alive, but it is better to know that in Christ we will never, never die.

Dan Cummings is a pastor friend who I admire in so many ways. He is one of the finest preachers in the state. He is a marathoner. He is a good dad and a fine husband. He is a leader of men. I admire him more than I can say and often listen to his preaching on my iPod.

A few weeks ago it was announced that he has inoperable cancer. If God does not choose to intervene in a miracle, he will not live. He is trying to write and preach to the glory of God while he is dying. He is writing and preaching through his affliction. This is his blog. There are links to his preaching, too.

We often quote Richard Baxter who said; I preach as a dying man to dying men. We all preach as dying men to dying men. In light of Dan’s condition the reality of that is very sharp now. May God give Dan grace to die if that is what He has chosen for him. May he give each of us grace to live and die.

May each of us seize every moment of life we are given for the Glory of God and for things eternal that will never pass away. It’s good to be alive but it is much better to know that in Chrsit we will never, never die.

Pastor Ken Pierpont
The Study
Evangel Baptist Church
May 2, 2008

An archive of Dan’s sermons can be found here.