Homestead Homilies

Barry Blackstone

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781532614804
  9781532614828
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532614811
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Relive through reminiscing and remembering, a Maine pastor's recollections of boyhood experiences that turned into a minister's messages in old age. After five decades (Barry's first message was preached in 1966), travel back in time with a lifelong Maineaic to his home place, the Blackstone homestead of Perham, Maine. What sparked these homilies was his inheritance of seven acres of the family farm, homesteaded in 1861, and the receiving of his grandparent's house built in 1924 at the death of his Uncle Paul. You will probably come to the same conclusion as this coastal Maine pastor--that his seminary training began long before he attended a Bible school in South Carolina in the early 1970s. Flash back with him to the 1950s and 1960s when spiritual lessons were everywhere on his rural potato and dairy farm. Pastor Blackstone didn't know it then, but realizes now that he was surrounded by family Bible teachers and friendly Biblical instructors that eventually would inspire this series of sermons. Homestead Homilies is a collection of scriptural observations inspired by a dog named Rover, an uncle named Read, a moonlit night, a barnyard hedge, a day plowing, a grandmother's helpful hand, a bee hive, a simple prayer, a sparrow's song, and many more simple events in a past age where homilies were being preached and now eventually heard. It is the author's prayer that these simple sermons will provoke the reader to remember long lost messages from their distant past.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction: Homestead Homilies
• 1: Plowing Straight
• 2: Creation’s Groan
• 3: Dawn’s Dawning
• 4: Sad Succourer
• 5: Grandmother’s Help
• 6: Morning Song
• 7: Sacred Sanctury
• 8: Weathering Weather
• 9: Plodding Plodder
• 10: Country Calm
• 11: Peaceful Place
• 12: Blessed Hope
• 13: Farmer’s Psalm
• 14: Vivacious View
• 15: Perham Prayers
• 16: Family Preacher
• 18: Blackstone Beekeeper
• 19: Chickadee Chorus
• 20: Farm Faith
• 21: Busybody Bees
• 22: Four Skies
• 23: Individual Influence
• 24: Worthy Walk
• 25: Fanner Bees
• 26: Young Giver
• 27: Farming Farmer
• 28: Admirable Afterglow
• 29: Good Gardener
• 30: Wonderful Wonder
• 31: Archer’s Arrows
• 32: Land Lamentation
• 33: Dale Dew
• 34: Town Tragedy
• 35: Homestead Hedge
• 36: Sparrow Sounds
• 37: Lesser Light
• 38: Morning Moonset
• 39: Homestead Health
• 40: Four Seasons
• 41: Noontime Nap
• 42: Refreshing Rain
• 43: Summer Storm
• 44: Salutatorian Sylvia
• 45: Pump Priming
• 46: “Great” Grandmother
• 47: Devote Dad
• 48: Frosty Frost
• 49: Clover Concepts
• 50: Hill Homily
• Conclusion: Soil Sermons