Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 128
May 18, 2014
Don’t Measure People, Love Them
I used to go with a friend to the Farm Science Review in Columbus, Ohio. We would pack up our boys in John Deer hats and head off for the day to sample all the free stuff and watch the new product roll-outs. I was like the Detroit Auto Show for farmers.
My friend was as good as gold—one of the best and truest friends I have ever had. Few people have done more for me. God allowed me to influence he and his family for Christ and he tried to repay me with deep loyalty and sacrificial friendship. His name is Gary Mickle.
Gary, like so many young central Ohio men, had a deep and burning ambition to farm, but not the cash. He worked as a lineman for the gas company. He had a sweet family and a tidy home—where every last thing worked, because he was a perfectionist and very talented.
I watched something happen to him at the Farm Science Review that was painful and instructive to me. It happened more than once. He would walk into a display and the sales rep would immediately move over and begin to make animated conversation with him. Gary looked every inch the farmer. The conversation was lively and intelligent because Gary was intensely interested and highly informed about agriculture.
Eventually the sales rep would steer the conversation to the real “money” question. It would usually sound something like this:
“So…. how many acres are ya’ farmin’ now?”
I would try to walk away to spare my friend any embarrassment.
Gary would quietly answer, “Right now I’m working for the gas company, but I hope to get a few acres and start farming soon.”
The rep would mumble something and then immediately—sometimes even mid sentence excuse himself and strike up a conversation with someone else.
I always thought, “That guy doesn’t know what a treasure of a human being he just insulted because he couldn’t see a way to ring an immediate profit from him.”
Often around Thanksgiving I call Gary, who now lives far away, and I tearfully thank him for all he did for me when I needed help so much—how God sent him into my life. Gary always protests that it was he who was blessed to have me in his life. That might be the only thing substantial that we really disagree on.
True followers of Jesus don’t go around trying to calculate what people can do for them. They walk into their world looking for people to love—like Jesus did. I want to be like Him.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
May 19, 2014
May 17, 2014
Carsickness Forgotten; Storytelling Podcast #2
A few years ago a family in our church lost their much-loved son to untimely death. To comfort them I created a story to help them see the difficulties of his life are now forever forgotten. I hope you enjoy the story.
Storytelling Podcast #2; Carsickness Forgotten
A few years ago a family in our church lost their much-loved son to untimely death. To comfort them I created a story to help them see the difficulties of his life are now forever forgotten. I hope you enjoy the story.
May 13, 2014
In The Restoration
Here’s a little writing I discovered unnoticed a few days ago. I thought some of you would enjoy reading it. It was originally written in 2004. The main incident took place in the early 90′s on the Rutledge Road farm in Ohio.
Every year I write each of the children a birthday letter. Usually it follows a simple outline. I profess my delight in them, give some examples from my memory and then go on to give them advice for the new year before I close by expressing my love and life-long commitment to them. Kyle turned twenty-three on Saturday and I departed from tradition and gave him no advice. Instead I listed two or three dozen memories that live in my heart as examples of the delight he had brought to our lives since the blustery late-October day he came into our arms.
After he read the letter he thanked me and said, “There is one memory I can’t believe you didn’t include. I can’t believe you didn’t list the time you wrecked that big red tractor out on Rutledge Road.” It is quite a story.
We lived for three and a half wonderful years on a little farmstead in eastern Knox County in Ohio. It was a farm of about ninety acres sixty of which were tillable. They were rented to a farmer who grew popcorn. The rest of the acres were hills and woods and creeks and rivers, an abandoned roadbed and outbuildings. The house was a two-story white frame house heated with natural gas. There was a gas well on the property. Our bedroom was downstairs, the boys shared a room upstairs as did the girls. That left the third upstairs room for my study. I loved to write in that garret room surrounded by books with it west-facing casement window.
It was my responsibility to keep the place mowed. Alternately there were two tractors available complete with “brush hog” mowers to do that. One was a little Ford 9-N like my grandfather had. The other was a Farmall “H” model with tricycle tires in front.
It took me a while to get that thing figured out. With the mower attached it was a big cumbersome rig. It was difficult to turn around and dangerous on hills. The power take off had no clutch so when it was attached to the mower the force of the big blades made it very difficult to stop. When you factor in all these things and add an inexperienced operator the result is comical when it is not dangerous.
If the ignition didn’t work, and usually it didn’t, you could start it with a hand crank, but you had to have courage or ignorance equal to your brawn to get the thing to work because if you didn’t do it just right it would kick back and snap your arm like a toothpick.
In defense of the machine he had served faithfully and long. I would gladly have sprung for coffee if he had ever been willing to tell me all the places he had been, the people he had served, and the jobs he had done through the years. But as long as I knew him he never talked. The old red and white H made a wonderful tractor sput-sput-sput that was inexplicably satisfying to listen to and smelled beautifully of grease and dust and gasoline.
One afternoon I was mowing a hillside and I got the contraption hopelessly hung up. I could not turn up hill to the right because the tires could not get traction. I could not back up because the mower would jackknife. I could not go forward because there was a dense woods there. I could not turn to the left because of a steep bank. I worked at it for and hour and a half.
Finally I decided to ask Kyle to stand clear while I tried to turn the thing into the bank and ride it down. I foolishly stood on the crossbar so if it looked like the tractor was going to roll I could jump clear. I headed over the embankment hoping to keep it under control but it lurched over the bank like a roller-coaster. I jumped off and watched the rig shoot down the embankment. I hoped the ditch that ran along the lane would stop it but it had a mind of its own. It easily jumped the ditch, shot across the lane, and went thundering down through the woods gaining frightening momentum and snapping off saplings like a tornado. Finally it slammed into the good sized tree with a sickening crash and came to a stop.
I ran down and shut off the tractor and stood there in uncomfortable silence. Kyle just stood there with his mouth opened and then after the dust settled said simply, “WOW.”
Mistakes and Regrets
I wish I could tell you that is the worst mistake I have every made. Something in all of us longs for Camelot. We have somewhere deep within us a longing for a place where we are insulated from the effects of sin, especially our own. A utopia. A haven. A heaven. An ideal community.
Peter and Jesus were talking one day and Peter, who had a penchant for simply asking the obvious unspoken question that hangs in the air said, “If we follow you what reward will be have. Jesus promised that “In the regeneration…” that is, in the kingdom age we will be compensated one hundred fold for leaving behind houses and lands to follow him.
It’s a short Bible story without much detail or description. If I get a chance in the Kingdom Age I am going to own a little hill farm and it is going to be perfectly tidy all mowed and everything. In the restoration of all things I will know what just what tools and implements to use and just how to fix things. And I will tend my place with a nice little tractor like a perfectly restored gray and red Ford 9-N just like my grandpa had. Farming and gardening without weeds should be interesting.
Maybe grandpa will visit and talk shop and he can introduce me to my great grandfather and my great, great grandfather, Jerome and the rest of the family who knew the Lord. And we will tell stories out on the porch.
I’ve made a lot of foolish mistakes. Some of them were so foolish that I am blessed to be alive. Some of them are worse then foolish. They are sinful. They are shameful, but they are under the blood of Christ. And in the kingdom age there will be a restoration of all things. Everything will be new and we will have a fresh new beginning. We will have whole new life with no wrinkles, no dents, no strained or broken relationships, no curse, no pain, no tears, no sorrow and no dying. And I when I’m not tramping the hills or off to Jerusalem for worship you might find me on my place, napping in my Adirondak, or tinkering with my tractor. It’s going to purr like a kitten.
Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
November 1, 2004
May 11, 2014
Why Did She Do It?
Mom is on the left. Her sister, our Aunt Sue is on the right.
Why did she do it?
About fifty years ago in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Clancy Street. My Dad was a seminary student, a student pastor, and he worked at a grocery store in the meat department. Mom had my sister Melony and I make invitations to what she calls a “Five-Day Club.” It was early in the summer. We finished the invitations and went go door-to-door handing out the invitations to our Five-Day Club. The next week for about an hour and a half a day in the morning our back yard was spread with blankets and twelve to fifteen of the neighbor children showed up to hear stories about Jesus and sing Christian songs. Mom used the Wordless Book to explain the gospel. It is one of my earliest memories.
Why did she do that?
Mom had a huge file of visualized Bible and Missionary stories and songs and memory verses. When she visited other churches it was common for people to see her there and ask her to sing. She had an old Avon kit bag she would keep in the car and when asked at the last minute to sing, she was always ready. She would send one of us out to the car for the Avon bag and she would sing with all her heart.
Why did she always do that?
Forty-four years ago, the bus came to a halt in front of Jew Knight’s Sinclair Station on State Route 47 in the tiny village of Logansville, in central Ohio. It was Tuesday evening so instead of crossing the road to our house, my sister Melony and I walked to the little white church. Tuesday night was Good News Club night. Mom and Mrs. Davis gathered the children of the village and we sang songs—eager to take turns holding the flash-cards. We memorized bible verses, and reviewed the books of the Bible. Mom taught a Bible lesson illustrated with flannel graph. Mrs. Davis taught an exciting serialized missionary story with a cliff-hanger at the end so you would want to come back next week to find out what happened to Rangu the Witch-Doctor’s Daughter. There are treats and prizes and friends. Over the years I memorized the stories an irritated my mother by whispering the punch-lines to the kids sitting around me.
Why did she always do these clubs? Why were they so important to her?
She did it because she knew it worked. She knew that that story told from a colorful book without words could completely transform a life and a family forever. It did the Shipley family… a family all broken up back in the late 1940’s. It was at a Vacation Bible School held at Bertrand Bible Church where she and her sister first heard the story of Jesus and believed the Gospel and were saved and forever changed.
But there was another reason. She did it so that we would do it. On Mother’s Day weekend I always talk with my Mom and I say, “What can I get you for Mother’s Day?” She always says something like this: “I just want you to serve the Lord. That’s all I want.”
When I think about it, I do every single day of my life just what Mom showed me how to do years ago. I go invite people to hear about Jesus. I sing songs and teach the Bible and tell exciting cliff-hanger stories to stir-up people’s hearts for Christ and make Him known. I just do all the time what I’ve seen my mother do hundreds and hundreds of times.
Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
May 12, 2014
May 9, 2014
Serious Celebration; Storytelling Podcast #1
This story was taken from a message preached at Evangel Baptist Church in Taylor, Michigan on July 3, 2011. You can listen to the entire message here.
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Storytelling Podcast #1; Serious Celebration
This story was taken from a message preached at Evangel Baptist Church in Taylor, Michigan on July 3, 2011. You can listen to the entire message here.
Subscribe to the Ken Pierpont Storytelling Podcast
Storytelling Podcast RSS Feed
Storytelling Podcast in iTunes
Seeing the Sacred in the Mundane
There are sacred and beautiful things all around all of us all the time, but we have to cultivate the capacity to enjoy them. This is a re-run an old piece that I hope will encourage you to see the sacred in the common things around you.
Wise men realize that after the years have come and gone the daily routines we practice and the daily routes we travel will become sacred memories.
For a while I commuted to work in Columbus, Ohio in an old brown Volvo along Interstate 71. The gas tank was defective so I had to stop for gas every morning at a Marathon station out on the interstate. That wasn’t all bad. I could always get a free cup of coffee with a gas purchase and enjoy a friendly exchange with the attendants who worked there. I never knew their names but I am confident there were times I was able able to brighten their day.
Somewhere along the way I would overtake a friend, Bob Bevins, en route to work. Passing him I would wave and for a second our souls would connect in wordless agreement, each of us doing what needed to be done to feed and clothe and raise a family. I had a lot in common with Bob. Our love for our families required us to leave them in the morning and drive the opposite direction of the pull of our hearts. In the evening we would hurry back toward hearth and home to be with our loved ones again. On a good day I was able to coax the little Volvo into overdrive then I could get up to seventy miles an hour. In good weather I would open the sunroof and follow the tug of my heart back home looking forward to supper and the chatter of little voices around the table.
Chesterville, Ohio
Each morning as I drove away from the big, white farmhouse and my sleeping family I would have a little pang of longing in my heart for them. I would steer my car down Bryant Road and across the bridge and then pull out onto State Route 95. Around Chesterville the warmth would begin to come from under the dash. Often I would spend the first part of my trip praying for the family and other things that were on my heart. After my stop for gas I would sometimes listen to news on the radio as I drove.
I usually enjoyed the solitude of my commute. It was time with the Lord and time to pray and think without interruption in the little “cocoon” of the cabin of my car. I liked knowing I was doing the one thing that had to be done at the time. Looking back I can see there is a sense of security and pleasure a daily routine and a daily route provide. There were times I would change my route for the sake of variety. I remember the old way to work with wistful fondness. When the routs and routines are a part of our daily obedience to God, part of the fulfillment of our god-given duties, then we see the sacred significance of them. They become sacred routes and sacred routines.
A Bit of Practical Advice
I am convinced that one difference between those who enjoy life and those who merely endure it is just this. Those who appreciate the sacred routes while they take them and those who recognize the sacred routines as they perform them are the ones who have a special capacity to find joy in life. I try to think how I will feel about a place twenty years from now. I try to imagine how I will feel about a person when I no longer have them. That helps me have a sense of appreciation for the routine and the mundane. They are things most people consider merely secular but are truly laden with sacred significance.
Kenneth L. Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
March 17, 2003
May 8, 2014
Ken Pierpont Storytelling Podcast Announcement
This Saturday morning I will post my very first Ken Pierpont Storytelling Podcast. I will include story told live and a story-telling tip for those of you who want to work on your communication skills. I hope you will pass the word along to your friends and let me know what you think. The podcast will be weekly and the new podcast will post every Saturday morning.
Enjoy Life Now
Later this month we are planning a trip to Bois Blanc Island in the Straits of Mackinaw. It will be an adventure. Years ago, when the children were small, I dreamed about being with the family in God’s creation. Here is a story a wrote ten years ago about something that happened about 20 years ago… Maybe it will encourage you to take advantage of springtime wherever you are.
Years ago I picked up a magazine on walking and hiking. On the cover was a silhouette of a lone hiker with a walking stick standing on a rock ledge over a picturesque valley filled with colorful trees. The magazine was filled with stories of adventures and pictures to go along with the stories. I thought about how nice it would be to explore some of those places some day with the boys. Hiking high ridges. Telling stories around a fire at night. Sleeping with the sound of the wild all around us. At the time Dan and Wes were not born. Kyle and Chuck were about eleven and seven years old. I closed the magazine and thought on that for a while. A plan began to form in my mind.
I checked the map. At the time we lived a beautiful thirty-minute drive from the Mohican National Forrest. I made a quick inventory of our resources. We had little food at home and less money, but we did have some peanut butter, some carrots and celery, and some Jonathan apples. We did have about three-quarters of a tank of gas in my little brown Dodge station wagon. We did have a picture-perfect autumn day ahead of us. The Mohican Forest had a fire tower and a covered bridge, acres of forest, a river running through it, miles of walking trails and some beautiful rock formations to explore.
We loaded our simple meal into a little day pack, grabbed our walking sticks and binoculars and started off soon after sunrise for a day together in creation. We hiked and explored. From one high vantage point we could see humming birds among the branches of a huge pine. Over a deep valley Turkey Vultures rode thermals high into the air. We hiked to a fire tower and climbed it to the top. The view was stunning. We hiked along high ridges and through valleys following the trails running along waterways. We explored a covered bridge over the river.
After we had worked up a huge appetite we found a little footbridge where a clear stream ran beneath the walking path. We stopped there to eat our lunch. Simple as it was the food tasted especially good outdoors. We ate all of it and sat for a while and watched the water run over the rocks below.
We hiked until late afternoon. It was a Saturday. I had preparations for the Lord’s Day. My heart was already full from time with my sons and the stimulation of God’s creation. We started home out of the State Forrest and along State Route 3 past farms and fields, hills rising and falling around us. We stopped and spent our only cash on a box of Little Debbie Nutty Bars and something to drink. We had all we needed and tucked away a memory that will live for years but we spent less than three dollars and a half a tank of gas.
Millions of people are going to have a great time someday when they have the money to do it. I would rather not wait, but find joy and share love in simple ways. With the things I have now and the people around me who love to be with me. I want my family to remember me as the kind of man who loved life and found lovely things to enjoy, even when He didn’t have a lot of money. I don’t want to wait to live until I have expensive toys and money for luxuries.
Here is my paraphrase of Proverbs 17:1 “Better is a simple meal with contentment and love than a house full of expensive things where there is no harmony.”
One more thing: The other night I had a wonderful time with Lois strolling the streets of a quaint historic village. There were dozens of little picturesque shops. It was evening and they were all closed so it was easy not to spend much money. The only shop open was an ice cream shop in a back alley. I bought Lois a big cone I knew she would never be able to finish so we enjoyed it together.
We strolled along the streets and held hands. The evening was perfect. I stole as many kisses as I could. I tried to think of ways to prolong the time together. Finally we drove slowly away from the village. Overhead Lois spotted a hot air balloon. There were others. We followed them. Eventually they led us to the margin of a lake were we walked and talked some more. The balloons drifted in the clear blue sky over the lake. The beauty of the sights linger in my heart now. The smooth surface of the lake reflecting a blue sky. The colorful balloons. Lois’s soft little hands in mine. Her deep brown eyes.
We didn’t have to travel to a far away place. We didn’t have to spend a lot of money. We didn’t have to wait to go somewhere else enjoy life.
Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn and International Conference Center
Flint, Michigan
