Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 54

Keep Christmas and Keep it Simple

Think back tonight on past Christmas seasons. What do you remember with the most fondness? Was it not small, simple things, a visit with a loved family member now many years gone, a favorite carol on the radio while the snow blows over the windshield and the car is warm within.

You remember your grandmother standing in the door to welcome you with a happy smile and your grandfather standing there over her shoulder beaming.

You remember the Captain Crunch they always kept in the funny drawer that tilted out from the bottom of the old refrigerator because they knew you were coming and that you liked it.

There was that tree in the corner with the fat colored lights. You recall the sound of carolers outside your door, and your mother walking around the group rewarding them all with cookies she put in the oven just as they arrived.

You don’t remember all your gifts and the ones you do remember were not all you thought they might have been but you remember the box of huge navel oranges and grapefruit a neighbor brought over one night. You remember the tea ring the lady next door always gave you on Christmas morning.

Between now and Christmas some kindness, some quiet moment, some simple gift or conversation, a song or a fragrance on the night air, the sound of sleigh bells will stay with you for years. You will cherish the memory of the Salvation Army brass out in the cold, the smile on the face of the old man ringing the bell by the kettle and the good will you felt when you dropped in a few coins and he warmly rewarded you with a heartfelt “Merry Christmas.”

These are the simple things that will lodge in your memory and warm your heart and bring tears to your eyes for many, many years–even long after some of the people associated with them are no longer with you.

You didn’t have much money but you do remember that night when dad had enough gas in the car to take you out on Mortgage Row to look at the light display that was actually sponsored by Dayton Power and Light Company to encourage energy consumption. You were Oohing and Ahhing and you were sure your heart was going to burst with waiting for Christmas.

It was mostly simple things, small things that make Christmas memories so dear to you, and people, of course. Most of all it was the whole amazing grace that God would come down and rescue us from our impossible mess.

So keep Christmas, but as much as lies within you, keep it simply. Keep it quietly. Keep Christmas with loud merriment if you like but keep it sitting in stillness by the crackling fire. Keep Christmas in large groups buzzing with excitement, but don’t overlook the charm of keeping Christmas in quiet solitude. Keep Christmas with larger-than-life pageantry if you like, but keep it with quiet morning devotions and a cup of coffee. Keep Christmas by walking at night under a full moon in the snow. (Right around December 22) Keep Christmas by reading A Visit From St. Nicholas to a child. Keep Christmas by telling someone the story of Jesus and why he came, and that He will come again and make everything wrong right and bring a new heaven and a new earth and peace and justice and righteous and every virtue a human heart ever longed for.

Keep Christmas… and keep it simple.

Ken Pierpont

Bittersweet Farm

Summit Township, Michigan

December 3, 2018

Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 21) “Christmasness”

Bittersweet Farm

Things are quiet in our little home tonight. It’s been a good day. The sun rose into a clear sky as I drove to Bethel this morning. It was the first Sunday of Advent. This year grandparents are reading the Advent Meditation and their grandchildren are lighting candles on the Advent wreath. It is a beautiful tradition. There was a beautiful spirit in the church today. The place was warm with love and buzzing with “Christmasness.” It’s Christmastime at Bethel and out on Bittersweet Farm.

Down in the corner of the living room is our first Christmas tree on Bittersweet Farm. It is a Frazier Fir that grew for the last ten years or so out on the slope of a quaint farm just short drive though the countryside from here. Lois and Hope and I took a wagon ride out to where it grew. It is the tallest tree we have ever had. I think our ceilings are about nine feet but I had to take almost three feet off the tree to tuck it into our living room.

Hope and I wound it with white lights. It’s just down there fragrant and glowing as if to say “Merry Christmas.” We have another tree glowing in the east-facing window of the Carriage House and yet another glowing on the front porch. We have as many Christmas trees as we do people.

As the first Sunday of Advent comes to a close and we ready for bed we are awaiting the advent our our latest grandchild a baby girl due to our oldest daughter, Holly and her husband Jesse and their son Aiden Redemption. She will be number eleven of our grandchildren.

Before I Go This Week. Here is a Christmas story I wrote many, many years ago:

I Brake for Christmas

December days are whizzing by like a run-away sled.

Did you ever find yourself going lots faster than you felt comfortable …right on the edge of being out of control? My first skiing experience was like that. I courageously pushed-off and concentrating on keeping my balance overlooked the importance of keeping my speed under control. At 200 pounds plus (and I do mean plus), it’s important to keep zig-zagging back and forth to keep your speed under control. Three quarters of the way down the slope it occurred to me that no one had ever taught me how to stop gracefully.??At the bottom of the slope were dozens of skiers making their way back and forth in front of a healthy sized creek. I did an awkward sort of lay out slide to keep from flattening two little girls in expensive ski outfits. They looked at me with a mixture of surprise and disdain and shuffled on. I got up trying to regain the composure I never really had while wiggling around so twenty or thirty pounds or so of snow would come out of my pants. (That’s why they wear those one piece things!).

I spent the rest of the day trying frantically to keep under control. When I did, I found the slopes to be a delight, when I didn’t, I attracted a lot of attention from those around me with more poise.

“Keep your weight on the downhill ski,” They kept telling me. When I did I made a little half-circle and started back up the hill. This way I could keep my speed under control. As long as I did that, skiing was delightful and safe—and less embarrassing.

December these days and modern Christmas is like a ski slope. It can be great fun but you really need to learn how to keep your speed under control.

It seems so incongruous to celebrate a humble quiet backward birth with the kind of bluster and ballyhoo that surround modern Christmas. Please don’t mistake me for a distant relative of Ebeneezer Scrooge, but I’ve found that just a little zig-zagging along the slope of modern yuletide can add to the delight of the season. It passes by so quickly and it’s gone and all the wonder and beauty and music fade back into the routine. Learn to slow it all down this year. You will be so glad you did.

This evening I serenaded the children in their beds with the guitar and the harmonica as they chirped out Christmas requests. We prayed and I came downstairs and put a quiet recording of calm, peaceful carols on the stereo and let my spirit drink in the quietness and solitude and peacefulness and purity and wonder of Christmas and the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ken Pierpont

Bittersweet Farm

Summit Township, Michigan

December 3, 2018

A Generous Soul (Audio)

How to Become a Generous Soul

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

November 25, 2018 AM

Lead Pastor Ken Pierpont

In this message I explain to the church four ways to have a generous soul. The passage is one of the richest text in the Bible about generosity. In the message I share some stories about God’s provision and explain the text which is 2 Corinthians 9:6-15.

https://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/How-to-Become-a-Generous-Soul.mp3

A Generous Soul (Video)

How to Become a Generous Soul

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

November 25, 2018 AM

Lead Pastor Ken Pierpont

In this message I explain to the church four ways to have a generous soul. The passage is one of the richest text in the Bible about generosity. In the message I share some stories about God’s provision and explain the text which is 2 Corinthians 9:6-15.

Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 20) November’s End

By the end of the week November will be over. Thanksgiving is past. We anticipate Advent and the beautiful season of our Lord’s Nativity. It is our first Christmas on Bittersweet Farm. They say by morning we can expect a significant snowfall. That will add to the festive mood and help me as I prepare my Christmas messages for Bethel Church. We added a couple new bird feeders last week. One looks like a red barn and the other looks like a little white church. I filled them with black-oil sunflower seeds and the birds and a squirrel were busy around them tonight while I puttered in the yard and enjoyed an evening comfortable enough for a light jacket.

They Must Have Prayed for Us

Thanksgiving ended and a little at the time the children took the grandchildren, strapped them in their little car seats, and drove away. As is our custom we stand and wave until they disappear over the hill to the west, then we walk back into the house with a lump in our throats.

We pick up the little things they left laying around and every thing reminds us of them, what they said, and the little people they are becoming. We tidy the house and put things back in order…

And we pray.

We pray that these dark and evil times will not crush the life out of them. We pray that they will have the endurance to stand against the strong tide of evil that pushes against them. We pray that the children will be safe and well, that they will know God intimately and love Him deeply.

We pray that they will turn their back on the empty promises the world makes and build their lives on the promises of the Word of God.

We remind ourselves that we are not the only generation, not the only people, who have had to keep the fire of our faith alive while cold winds of cynicism and skepticism, immorality and infidelity threaten to blow it out.

We climb the stairs to bed and we talk and our hearts breathe out prayer to God for their lives and their precious souls. Though more and more the world around them is filled with people living in open rebellion toward God or in dark ignorance of God.

We pray that they will flourish spiritually, a remnant of faithfulness, a faithful minority in whom the sweet Holy Spirit of God dwells.

We pray that they will be holy and happy and healthy, filled with all fullness of God and strengthened with might by His power in their inner person.

We pray that they will be among those of whom Paul wrote to the Ephesians there would be… “…glory in the church through all generations…”

We pray and plead with God to keep growing us into the example they need of people living in joyful and complete dependance upon God.

We pray and confess our great weakness, our poor examples, our failures and sins and selfishness–all of the ugly things in us that might have distracted them from the beauty of Jesus.

Then we drift off to sleep and wake up in the night and their faces come before us. We remember the things we said to them. We remember the words they said to us. We know in the stillness of the night that You alone are our only hope and help. You alone are their only hope and help.

I wonder if my grandparents who all came to know and love the Lord in mid-life, felt the same way about us when we drove away from a long holiday weekend together. Then I remember their sober faces and their eyes searching our eyes for understanding. I remember their affirmations of love, the preparations they made, the tender warnings they gave. When I think of it I remember their gentle warnings and their worn Bibles and I remember their habits of faith and faithfulness. I remember their practical gifts. I remember their humble homes. I remember the little circles of prayer when we parted and their tearful eyes.

And then I know that when we drove out of sight they must have gone to their rooms and they must have lay in their beds and their hearts must have ached with tenderness and they must have prayed for us. They must have remembered the things I said. They would have noticed how quickly I had grown since last I saw them. They must have wanted to open my little heart and take the love of God they had found and put it into mine… I’m sure they worried. It was the sixties. The world was becoming a scary place to raise kids.

They prayed. I’m sure of it. Sure of it. And they are with the Lord now and they have been for years. But I have built my life on the promises of God. I have placed my hope in the God of my Fathers and the God of my Mothers. Those people who stood waving goodbye, walked back into the house fighting back tears, lay in their bed and prayed. Carried their Bibles to church and sang and prayed and listened to the preaching of God’s Word and hoped for grandchildren would follow Jesus.

Ken Pierpont

Bittersweet Farm

Summit Township, Michigan

November 25, 2018

Something New

I have created a podcast called; Stories from Bittersweet Farm. You can listen to it here. Soon it will be available in iTunes. I will point you to it what it is available.

Bittersweet Farm

Like a John Sloane Print

If you know the Bittersweet Farm story you know that the first time we saw the place it reminded me of a John Sloane print. This was the kind of house John Sloane would paint. Often there would be a middle-aged man standing in the picture looking off in the distance. Every year I would purchase a calendar of John Sloane pictures. Every month I would turn to the new month and stand in my study for a quiet moment and imagine myself in the picture. Fact is at the time I had to drive 30 minutes to a Metropark and I had to purchase a special sticker for my window just to take a walk under some trees.

Since God provided Bittersweet Farm, all I have to do is step out the back door. The fields around are owned by a kind neighbor who has given me permission to roam the hundreds of acres afield whenever I want. This week I wanted you to see a side-by-side comparison of a John Sloane print and a photo I snapped of our home this fall.

Something New!

I have added a simple podcast to the content I write and produce to encourage you. You can now listen to the Stories from Bittersweet Farm Podcast. You can visit the podcast page here.

The podcast is available on a number of formats, and will be available in iTunes soon. Bittersweet Farm

When Thanksgiving is Hard (Sermon) Audio

When Thanksgiving is Hard

Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan

November 18, 2018 AM

Pastor Ken Pierpont

https://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/When-Thanksgiving-is-Hard.mp3

When Thanksgiving Is Hard (Sermon) Video

When Thanksgiving is Hard

Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan

November 18, 2018 AM

Pastor Ken Pierpont

The Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 19) The Girl in The “Thanksgivingy” Poncho

I’m in the corner of my room writing. Hope is downstairs making potato soup and singing Christmas carols. She’s been singing Christmas carols since early November. She’s really belting them out. It’s a happy sound. She was on the Bethel Worship Team this morning and during church it was her turn to teach Church Time for the wee children at Bethel. She got up early and prepared her lesson and got dressed for church and drove off in the snow in her little fluorescent green Beatle.

She was wrapped in a warm poncho this morning that looked all cozy and “Thanksgivingy.” She’s a delightful girl to have around and she is bright. Every once in a while, she even beats me in “This is Jeopardy.” (It’s a fluke when that happens, but she is a bright girl). Probably typical of a child born to older parents she sits with us every weeknight after the news and we don’t move until the final clue has been given. She often makes dinner. Lois cleans up. I faithfully lend charm to the place. 

This week we will have some of the children and grandchildren in for our first Thanksgiving on Bittersweet Farm. Last year at this time we were working hard to get Granville Cottage sold so we could move out into our quaint parish in Jackson County. Hope was in Oregon at Bible School then and Lois and I were trying every day to get the house ready and pack and thin out our possessions to downsize into our little farm house. Our hearts were heavy from a great sadness.

This year at Thanksgiving our lives are different. Our hearts are glad with a great joy. Autumn lingered into November. Then the season took a hard turn and already it has snowed three or four times. The other morning there was enough snow for me to start my little tractor and push it around some. The furnace purrs and the warmth spills out and warms our little country home. Light glows from within and we are glad and thankful. We know that God is good. When life is hard God is good. When people are bad, God is good. Even when we are bad God is good. Thanks be unto God we have tasted and we have seen the goodness of God that overcomes the darkest badness.  

I closed my Thanksgiving message at Bethel Church this morning with this true story of thanksgiving:

There Was Once A Man

—suffered great loss in his life. 

—He had a very difficult marriage. 

—He made some very serious mistakes the crushed him with guilt and shame. 

—He and his lover had a child die in infancy.

—He had a son he loved very much, who rebelled and eventually came to a violent end. 

—He had many heartaches.

—He had many enemies who eventually slandered him and betrayed him.

—He had much family conflict. 

—He made some serious mistakes that cost him and those around him dearly. 

—But he had a heart for God and when he reached the end of his life he wrote a famous poem… one of the most beloved poems ever written. 

—the last line of the poem goes like this… “…surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the day of my life…”

His name was David and his poem is called The Twenty-Third Psalm. He wrote another poem known as the One Hundredth Psalm… It is the first poem I ever memorized… It reaches it’s great climax with an affirmation of the eternal goodness of God… can you say it with me…

“A Psalm for giving thanks. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” (Psalm 100, ESV)

I hope it’s not a hard Thanksgiving for you, but even if it is can I remind you from the deepest place in my heart: When life is hard, God is good. Thanks be unto God.

Ken Pierpont

Bittersweet Farm–Summit Township, Michigan

Thanksgiving Week

November 19, 2018

Follow Jesus-Help Others Follow Jesus (Sermon) Audio

Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan

Follow Jesus–Help Others Follow Jesus

Luke 15

https://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Follow-Jesus-Help-Others-Follow-Jesus.mp3