Last year I spoke at Grace Bible College in Grand Rapids. Monday Hannah and Daniel moved onto campus and joined the class of 2014. We like them being together and we like them being close to the family. It’s sad to see Wes and Dan separated. They have been inseparable buddies for years.

We bought them a few things they would need over their continual objections. They thanked us over and over again for the few simple things we did buy. As the sun set we prayed through happy tears, took a few last pictures, and drove away—commending them to God. They stood and waved until we were out of site. As dusk turned to night, one at a time, memories came of the joy of raising the two of them.

They are both middle children who learned to be happy sharing. They always shared rooms with siblings. Many of their clothes were worn by someone else first. They didn’t expect much and they were grateful for anything they had. They looked up to their older siblings and influenced the younger. Before we knew it they were beautiful young people, making their own way.

They both are sincerely following Christ and training to serve Him more effectively. On the trip home Lois and I felt the embrace of our Father and a warm wave of gratitude for the gift that Hannah and Daniel are to us.

I love the idea of having 24-hour road service. There are five women in our home and I don’t want any of them ever to be stranded on a dark and lonely stretch of road. I don’t want my sons stranded either. Dan was on the way to church the other day and the Jeep died—just stopped running. He had barely rolled to a stop when Steve Massengill, one of the men of our church—rolled up in his pick-up and offered roadside assistance. Sunday night he offered to help me get the battery on the charger. Monday morning he picked me up and helped me get the Jeep to the shop for repair.

It’s been that way all my life. I have been “broken down” in more ways than one and it seems that God always arranges someone to be there to help me. He may one day choose to allow me to be alone and without help and I will not charge Him with unfaithfulness, but it warms me to think how many times He has sent the right person at the right time in the right place and equipped him with just the right skill or experience to help me with what I need.

A few years ago I was talking with a friend who had an old van and a large family and had returned from a long trip. He had had some mechanical difficulty. He was able to do the repair himself by the roadside, but if he had needed a tow there would not have been enough room in the truck for his large family.

“Do you have AAA roadside assistance?” I asked.

“No, can’t afford it.”

I said, “I tell you what. If you ever get into the situation again, keep your number in my wallet and call me. I will do whatever I can to help you. You consider me your 24-hour roadside assistance. I will do whatever needs to be done to get help to you. You can count on me.”

My friend looked me in the eye and said; “Pastor, the same goes for you. If you are ever broken down with your family and you need help and you don’t know what to do, you keep my number with you and call me. I will do the same for you. You can count on me.”

This he spoke with gravity and deep sincerity, looking me directly in the eyes and then he extended his hand and gave me a firm handshake. There was a wordless fraternity between us that day. It’s nice to have someone that you can call on when you are trouble. It’s even nicer to be the kind of person others can call on when they are in trouble.

You may even be the answer to someone’s prayer that way.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 24, 2010

During these times I taught the word of God and told the stories of God and the stories of God’s work in my life. Then, each day, I took time to listen to lots of kids tell me their stories. I would eat with the kids or I would tell them, “If you want to talk look me up this afternoon. I will have my toes in the water and we can sit on the dock and I will give you the talking stick.” Two of my daughters, Holly and Hannah spent the summer counseling at camp and they told me some of the stories of their campers. Two of my sons work with youth and they frequently tell me the stories of the teens they work with. There is one great word—one great theme that hangs over almost all of these conversations. It seems to be a main subject in almost every story: Hurt. All kids have hurts. Most kids have deep hurts. Many have devastating on-going hurt in their lives.

Last week, on Saturday night, Dan and Wes and I drove back home from Barakel into the early hours of the morning on quiet roads. Usually I would listen to a good podcast or some edifying music. Sometimes, after a week at camp I will put the songs of the week on my iPod and re-live the sweetness of worship that we experienced during the week. But Saturday night as the boys slept and the miles passed a deep burden and a clear vision formed in my heart. I could not stop seeing the faces of the young people or hearing their voices. I could not stop thinking about the Downriver—the area where we live and work—my mission field. I thought about the thousands of young people who live in a ten or fifteen-mile circle of our church, their hurts and their need for Christ.

I believe that no one gets through life without hurts. Even the greats of the Bible, who were loved of God, hurt. You can read this in the laments of the Bible. The book of Lamentations chapter three through verse 20 is a good example of this. When life hurts God has not abandoned his people. He is still faithful. When bad things are happening to those who love God, He is always up to something God. He is faithful. You can see this in Lamentations 3:21-17. Even when things are hard his mercies are new every morning. Sometimes his mercies are severe, but they are mercies form God and he is in control. When we think of this we can have hope. His compassion never fails.

When life hurts, God is there and He is faithful—he’s doing something… but will your hurts push you away from Him or into his arms. Will you get closer to God or farther away when hurt comes into your life? Will you trust God to compensate you for your hurt with a dynamic spirit or with rewards in heaven or will you be buried in bitterness and anger.

This is the message I would like to get to the thousands of young people who live within the sound of the “voice” of Evangel. When a child or a teen is drowning in hurt someone who is on solid footing needs to be there to throw them a life-preserver. When they are staggering in the dark someone needs to give them an arm to lean on and lead them out of danger. I want to lead our church in doing what needs to be done to help families. May of them are single-parent families. Thousands of them are suffocating in shame and guilt because of past failures. They don’t see any way out. Satan has conspired to bury them in guilt and shame and confuse them about the gospel. They see the church as an organization devoted to adding to their burden of guilt, not ultimately removing their guiltiness forever.

God has stirred my heart and inspired my heart to find broken hearts and introduce them to the One who can give them a new heart.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 18, 2010

Jerry Falwell started in his home town in a church meeting at the Donald Duck Bottling Company and when he died the church was running over 25,000 in attendance. He left behind the largest Christian college in the nation. God used Jerry Falwell to impact his home-town and all of America for good. His wife and children all loved him, and they each love the Lord.

I can’t articulate all the reasons why, but I have always loved to read Wendell Berry. I’m not sure how I overlooked it but in 1991 he wrote a small book on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. It’s my current pleasure reading.

He is one of those “born-again” Christians and he is not keeping it to himself. According to charges he has been urging cadets and staff to pray. He even went so far as to say that they are “accountable first to their God.”

Maybe I’m just a little sensitive, being a one of those contemptible “born-agains” myself, but I have some questions. Have the senators read history during the course of their training? Are they aware of the overt faith of our founding fathers? Have the read the writings and addresses of George Washington? Have they seen a print of him keeling in the snow at Valley Forge? Would they consider him a worthy military leader? Would they have confirmed his promotion? Would they dare sensor him for being a man of faith and urging others to pray and consider their accountability to God?

Aren’t there real scandals they could attend to? Might they even consider policing their own ranks rather than participating in clear discrimination against an officer of good reputation and faithful service? Do we really want to be governed by men and woman who consider prayer and accountability to God scandalous behavior?

They say after 26 years of faithful service with an impeccable record Gen. Weida has issued an apology. I think the senators should apologize.

Ken Pierpont
Riverfront Character Inn
Flint, Michigan
August 8, 2005

The people were good to us. Elmer Brown introduced me to “punkin’ blossoms.” His wife Edith worked at the phone company. Clyde Winzlet was Quaker, stern but good as gold. His wife Vera was Pentecostal. Their compromise was our Community Church. Hank and Cora Linfeld couldn’t have children but they enjoyed everyone else’s. They were very frugal, but hey were generous with us. Harold Peters was a good man. I noticed everything went smoothly in the church if I would drop in and spend a couple hours drinking coffee with him every few weeks. His wife, Mildred had a kind smile and made a good pie to go with the coffee. They were proud of their children who were as old as my parents. Rich and Barb Thompson were younger. Bob loved to bowl and could recall his games frame by frame years into the past if you showed the slightest interest. He would do anything to help you. Barb especially loved and be-friended my wife, Lois, who was new at this “Pastor’s wife” thing. Jerry Haynes was a big, good natured, farmer with an infectious laugh. His wife Kate was a fabulous cook. Not in the gourmet sense, but in the farm-wife sense.

They were good folk. Salt-of-the-earth. They put up with my youthful mistakes and inexperience. Like most country churches, the folk were pretty much satisfied with the way things were and things hadn’t changed since anyone could remember. But from time to time they set aside their resistance to change to let me try some of my new ideas. They didn’t even vote me out when I got a “permanent” even though one of the ladies said she couldn’t take me seriously until it grew out. (A “permanent” should really be called a “temporary”, I think).

The parsonage set across the road. A neat Cape-Cod on a square of green lawn cut from the corner of a grain field. Lois put in a small garden while growing large with our first-born. We brought our little son home from the hospital to that little house and the good people rejoiced with us.

The pay was not much. I supplemented the small income by selling Fuller-Brush door to door in the next county north. People helped too. It was common for people to load me down with sweet-corn, tomatoes, string beans, zucchini, or berries when I made my pastoral calls in the countryside. Sometimes, after I offered prayer, they would send me home with a nice cut of meat from their freezer.

Many Sundays as I stood on the steps shaking hands with a parishioners one of them would slip a few dollars or a check into my hand. Once at Christmas time they presented us with a small artificial Christmas tree. There were dozens of tiny Christmas packages tied to its branches. We will never forget sitting in the living room of the parsonage later that night un-wrapping each of those little gift ornaments. We were delighted to discover each of them contained ten or twenty or fifty dollar bill. When we finished counting it equalled nearly a month’s salary. As you can imagine we grew to love the people at Beaver.

There were, however, irritations to endure. Bob and Bertha were two of them. Bob was the church janitor. Bertha was the assistant janitor and church pianist. They were conscientious, as far as that goes. They arrived early. They were careful to wrap things up and turn off the lights and see to it the doors were locked.

But when you were trying to talk after the service Bob would stand at the back of the room and turn the lights off one bank at a time. You felt like he was trying to sweep you out of the room like so much dirt so he could lock-up and go home.

Then, there was Bertha’s heel-dragging. I always wanted the piano player to play for five or ten minutes before the service began. It would set the atmosphere and encourage people to gather in. A sort of emotional preparation. I asked her regularly to do this but she wouldn’t. What she did was sit with her husband as if she didn’t plan to play at all until I went to her and specifically asked her to begin. If I asked her too early she would simply stay in her seat and rummage in her purse or get involved in conversation. I would have to ask her again. She refused to take that bench even one minute before the announced starting time of the service.

It’s hard to lead a happy song service when you are mad enough to wring the piano player’s neck.

And there was the vacuum. Bob and Bertha were responsible to vacuum the building each week. They didn’t want to make a special trip out to the building, so they did their clean-up before the Wednesday evening meeting. Now this service was important to me. I would often have special hand-outs or audio-visuals. I wanted to make the service helpful and worth attending. I always wanted to have some music playing when people arrived. And because I was expected to stop right on time, I wanted to get started right on time, too. I took this meeting seriously.

Bertha took her job seriously, too. The church owned a huge canister vacuum about the size of a fifty-five gallon drum that sounded like a 747 taxiing into position for takeoff. Bertha would drag that thing down the middle aisle to the front of the church and fire it up minutes before the service would begin. It made conversation impossible. To make matters worse, she would jab the ground around your feet with the wand so you felt like livestock being prodded into submission.

When the appointed meeting-time arrived and people had made their way through the obstacle course to their seats, she would shut off the contraption and while it wound down she would slowly make her way to the platform plunk herself on the bench. She would let out a big “I’m-so-overworked” sigh and roll her eyes my way to hear the number I announced. Every week she would leave that monstrous appliance sitting square in the middle of the aisle during the service. It looked like aliens had dropped in for prayer meeting and parked their space craft up by the altar.

We survived the experience and went on to work with other people in other churches in other states. Most of them were energetic and cheerful to be serving the Lord. Some of them required a little more patience and tact. But Bob and Bertha were in a class all to themselves.

I suppose if you were to go to Mercer Chapel this Wednesday night you would find them still faithfully serving the Lord …weather they liked it or not. I wonder if the Psalmist David knew anybody like Bob and Bertha when he wrote; “Serve the Lord with gladness.” (Psalm 100:2)

*It’s probably best if you assume this little story is fiction.

Calling on Ida Taylor one day she asked me if I would like something to drink. She said: “We have lemonade, iced tea, apple juice or grape juice. What would you like?” “Oh, I would love a glass of grape juice.” I quickly answered.

She brought me a tall cold glass of grape juice and we visited for a while. I told her I had loved grape juice since I was a little boy. It was a treat that we would sometimes have when we visited my grandparents. As soon as I emptied my glass Ida refilled it.

The next time I dropped by to visit Ida’s daughter was visiting and she put a glass of grape juice in my hand before I sat down.

I visited Ida often that year because she was diagnosed with cancer. Sometimes I visited her at home other times I prayed with her before tests or treatments in the hospital. Once we even moved the whole church to her front lawn because she was sick from treatments and missed going to Sunday School. One cold morning in late October I stood beside her grave and preached her funeral. I made the gospel as clear as I knew how to do it. She had made me promise not to candy things up but to give it to them strait. Tell them about heaven and hell and how Jesus died for sinners. I did. The gray sky was spitting snow when I drove away.

A few weeks after her death I was visiting with her husband Harold. When I sat down in my usual chair Ida’s daughter put a glass of grape juice down on the table beside me. “Thank you,” I said. How did you know I liked grape juice? “Oh, are you kidding,” she said. “My mother made it very clear to all of us that we were to see to it that there would always be a full bottle of grape juice in the refrigerator in case you stopped by for a visit. We heard it from her if we forgot.”

Small gestures of thoughtfulness like that are the stuff of life and love. I never drink a glass of grape juice anymore without thinking about Ida Taylor.

Jesus said, “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.” (Matthew 10:41 NKJV)

(From Stonebridge Newsletter – Number 60)

She smiled and said; “I could sure use a drink of water.” I laughed and said, “Well, it looks like I came along at just the right time. I have a nice, cold bottle of water right here.”

I handed it to her and she thanked me warmly. It seemed to both of us that the Lord timed our little meeting and arranged for her to be thirsty and for me to have a bottle of water that afternoon to demonstrate my appreciation for her work.

This summer Marlene isn’t working in the flowers at the church anymore. She may be working with flowers, but she has moved. She lives with her Savior now. She was diagnosed with cancer and within a few months she was with the Lord.

Throughout her illness she had a continual peace and confidence in the Lord without wavering. She was buried in mid-June when the flowers were really just starting.

So now you may understand why it touched my heart to see Dave working in the same flowerbeds this week. She and Dave would have been married forty years if she had lived to the end of the year.

So now when I look out my window at the flowers I thank God for Marlene and Dave and I remember to enjoy Lois and all the flowers she has tended in my life while I still can.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 7, 2010