Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 57

Bittersweet Farm Journal (Number 13) Satisfied Hearts

We’ve been sleeping with an extra cover the bed for the last few weeks, but tonight the temperature is dipping into the mid-forties so we turned on the furnace. Down in the basement the faithful appliance goes to work and in just a couple minutes a beautiful stream of warmth fills the room to just the perfect temperature and then falls quiet.

Last week I decided to test the furnace just to be sure it was ready for the season. It wasn’t. I called Keith Gillmore who is as handy as they come and an expert at furnaces. He came over tonight for a good talk and noticed a part that was supposed to be turning was not turning. He removed a few screws and discovered a dead bat was plugging the works.

We stood outside for a bit to talk about furnaces and restoring old cars and making cider. Keith grew up on a farm with an orchard making cider. I asked him if he missed it this time of year. He said he didn’t but a smile comes to his face as the tells his cider-house stories. Something about it just seems right standing out in the cool of an October nightfall while the farmer back of Bittersweet Farm shaves the last remaining rows of corn off his place and pours the precious fruit of the earth into a waiting grain truck.

I love living in a place where deer and wild turkeys stroll around the back acre, geese and cranes soar overhead, bittersweet grows in the rocky fencerow, and bats and other critters flit and seal about in the darkness. The windows are closed to the night air tonight, but my walk will be bracing in the morning.

The trees bending over the road are beginning to turn orange and yellow. When the sun falls on them they irradiate their color. Something in the beauty of it leaps into our soul.

When I drive through a tunnel of October-tinted trees it is a worship experience without fail. May heart rises up in grateful praise. The Great Artist of the Universe did not have to paint with such vivid and captivating colors but He did. He did it as a witness to His goodness to draw your soul upward to Him.

Bittersweet near Bittersweet Farm

Jesus himself is the Great Creator and only he can satisfy your heart. He alone should have your heart.

On one of the Apostle Paul’s church-planting missions he visited Lystra. God allowed them to heal a man who had not been able to walk from birth. When people of Lystra saw this they tried to worship Paul and Barnabas. The men quickly reminded them that only God who made the heaven and the earth and all that is in them was worthy of worship and able to satisfy the deepest longings of their souls.

“Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”” (Acts 14:17, ESV)

There is something to think about when you are lying in your bed on a cool October night and you year the furnace kick on.

Ken Pierpont

Bittersweet Farm

Summit Township, Michigan

October 8, 2018

Bittersweet Farm from the North

Winter Birds in Summer, Summer Birds in Winter

Our lives matter more than we think. We are more influential than we imagine. Even if we were to try to live isolated lives, our lives touch so many other lives in so many ways. Only looking back from the perspective of eternity will we see the full wonder of it, I think. In beautiful prose Wendell Berry wrote of this in one of his earliest books about a small house he rebuilt and lived in for a time on the banks of the Kentucky River:

The book is The Long-Legged House. In it Berry writes of observing some waterfowl that had migrated to Kentucky from near Hudson Bay in Canada.

“…But my encounter with them cast a new charm on my sense of the place. They made me realize that the geography of this patch of river bank takes in much of the geography of the world. It is under the influence of the arctic were the winter birds go in summer, and of the tropics, where the summer birds and go in winter. It is under the influence of forest and of croplands and strip mines in the Appalachians, and it feels the pull of the golf of Mexico.

How many nights have the migrants loosed from their guide stars and settled here to rest or to stay for a season or two die and enter this earth? The geography of this place is airy and starry as well as earthy and watery. It’s been arrived at from 1000 other places, some as far away as the polls. I’ve come here from great distances myself, and I’m resigned to the knowledge that I cannot go without leaving it better or worse. Here as well as any place I can look out my window and see the world. There are lights that arrive here from deep in the universe. A man could be provincial only by being blind and deaf to his province.”

—From Wendell Berry The Long-Legged House.

Wendell Berry writing at the Long-Legged House.

Bad for My Writing But Good for My Soul

It was one year ago today we found Bittersweet Farm. We came across it while looking at another property. When I first saw it I cried out in surprise; “Look it’s a John Sloane house.”

The place remained me of the country houses painted by John Sloane, a favorite artist. Every year I would buy the John Sloane calendar. Every month I would stand quietly before it and turn the page on a new month and imagine I was standing in the picture or sitting on the porch or warm within reading by a glowing light.

We immediately recognized the smiling providence of God that afternoon. It was the first of October nearing the golden hour in the late afternoon. The sky was clear and shirt-sleeve comfortable. We walked though the house and around the property and before we left we had a agreement to buy the place. The owner, Charles Perlos, took the house off the market until we could sell Granville Cottage back in Riverview.

By mid-January Granville Cottage sold and that afternoon Bittersweet Farm was ours.

This afternoon I took a little drive in George the Red Jeep with the windows down, slow along a remote road a few miles east of here. I separated a doe from her fawn. The fawn ran along in the woods parallel my Jeep until he could return to his mother.

Tonight I found more bittersweet growing in the fencerow that runs along the Spring Arbor-Summit Township line that is the western border of our property. Geese passed overhead in a perfect wedge formation. Crows called put over the corn. Walnuts thumped to the ground. Leaves danced along the ground ahead of the wind.

I got out my little John Deer and mowed, breathing in the fragrance of new-cut grass. You think when you mow. Tonight I thought about how many more times I will need to mow, when the leaves will come down, and when I should perform my annual maintenance and attach the snow plow. The experienced guys in the church will know. I will ask them.

Mowing I watched the house. A little light shown from within. I was waiting for Hope to step out on the porch and call me in for supper. Lois was making one of our favorites tonight. I finished the lawn, put away the tractor and came into the house. Supper was ready. The house smelled like apples and cinnamon.

Bittersweet Farm hasn’t been good for my writing but it has been good for my soul. I don’t want to come inside until a half-hour after dark and then I’m tired and my thinking isn’t crisp so I put my writing aside—but my soul is glad and my body is tired. I crawl into our high bed. It sits between the south-facing windows in our upstairs bedroom. When the moon is shining the light falls into the room on either side of the bed. Some nights I put my arm around Lois. She rests her head on my chest. We lie together in quiet security and humble thankfulness and we pray for the children and we thank God for Bethel and for Bittersweet Farm.

Ken Pierpont

Bittersweet Farm

Summit Township, Michigan

October 1, 2018

Lord, Make Me Sober in the Face of Evil (Sermon) Audio

Series: The Unseen World; Angels, Demons, God and You

Sermon Title: Lord, Make Me Sober in the Face of Evil

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

September 30, 2018 AM

Pastor Ken Pierpont

http://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Lord-Make-Me-Sober-in-the-Face-of-Evil.mp3

Lord, Make Me Sober in the Face of Evil (Sermon) Video

Series: The Unseen World; Angels, Demons, God and You

Sermon Title: Lord, Make Me Sober in the Face of Evil

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

September 30, 2018 AM

Pastor Ken Pierpont

Lord, Help Me Adore You As the Angels Do (Audio)

Series: The Unseen World: Angels, Demons, God, and You

Sermon 3: Lord, Help Me Adore You As Your Angels Do

Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan

Pastor Ken Pierpont

September 23, 2018 AM

http://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lord-Help-Me-Adore-You-As-Your-Angels-Do.mp3

Lord, Help Me Adore You As Your Angels Do (Video)

Series: The Unseen World: Angels, Demons, God, and You

Sermon 3: Lord, Help Me Adore You As Your Angels Do

Bethel Church-Jackson, Michigan

Pastor Ken Pierpont

September 23, 2018 AM

Nodding Goldenrod and Autumn Worries

It’s a nice fall Saturday on Bittersweet Farm. It’s been very warm and sunny, but last night a cold front came through–literally blew in. Temps dropped into the 40’s overnight. First frost isn’t due until early October, but that is only a few weeks away.

I rose early to pray with the Bethel elders as I do every Saturday. Lois and I did a couple little projects together. She made granola. The house smelled like almonds, sunflower seeds and cinnamon. I did a few small chores to help Lois and Hope and some light car maintenance. College football murmurs in the background–never far from mind on day light this.

I puttered around the carriage house a bit. Now I’m in my “reading chair” and Haz is currently curled up on the footstool. Hope is making diner. Later I will go over my message for tomorrow again.

Goldenrod nods in the sunny breeze and leaves are turning. The woods are blushing with color. First the yellows–Elm and Locust in September. The Maples will flame orange and red in October, then the Oaks will linger brown and rust into November.

There are about 30 mature Walnut trees on Bittersweet Farm. Every few minutes a walnut will fall from high in the trees and “thump” in the yard. People are busy taking care of business before the cold weather comes. Every night six or eight deer bed down in our back acre. Their coats are darkening for winter. I wonder how aware they are of the mayhem about to explode around them in November.

Among the good things about living in a state like Michigan are the mellow month of September, the crisp, colorful beauty of October, and the grey and brown month of November ending in a weekend of thanksgiving. They are a three month reminder to take care of business and keep your affairs in order at all times. This is good for your soul.

My thoughts and worries turn into prayers when I lie in bed on a cool autumn night beside my wife of almost 40 years, under and extra blanket, wondering when I should cave in and let the furnace warm the old house. That’s the way it should be.

Ken Pierpont

Bittersweet Farm

Summit Township, Michigan

September 22, 2018

Lord, Pass Me Not (Sermon) Video

Series: The Unseen World; Angels, Demons, God, and You

Message: Lord, Pass Me Not

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

September 16, 2018 AM

Pastor Ken Pieppont

Lord, Pass Me Not (Sermon) Audio

Series: The Unseen World; Angels, Demons, God, and You

Message: Lord, Pass Me Not

Bethel Church–Jackson, Michigan

September 16, 2018 AM

Pastor Ken Pieppont

http://kenpierpont.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lord-Pass-Me-Not-1.mp3