Welcome to gregorystover.com and Reflections from Coveside Cottage. For years I claimed that I would write more. In recent years, I have pondered a blog again and again. Ideas would come. Then sermons to write, classes to teach, people to care for, leadership to offer in the local church, as well as other reading and writing would seem to consume the hours of the day. Time would slip away and so would the writing. Now, as a retired elder of the United Methodist Church, my hypothesis is that I will have more time and energy to do what I have long imagined and told myself I would like to do. We will see!

Let me share a bit about the name — Reflections from The Coveside Cottage. Five years ago Linda, my wife, and I fulfilled a longtime dream of owning a home on a lake. After much searching and some false starts, we purchased a beautiful lot on Lake Waynoka, a three-hundred acre lake in southeastern Brown County, Ohio. In October 2012 we completed our lake home which now overlooks largest cove at Lake Waynoka. Coveside Cottage was built with our expectation that it would be our retirement home one day. That day has arrived!

Some around the lake call our cove, Powerline Cove because the major power line supplying our area runs over one part of the cove. Others call our cove Party Cove! Stop by on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon from late Spring through the early Fall and you will understand the name! Dozens of boats anchor up so their passengers can enjoy the hot sun and cooling water. As you might imagine, Party Cove isn’t very quiet during those times. Music (sometimes too loud), gleeful squeals of children as they leap from a boat with a splash, or jovial bantering among adults fill the air.

Monday through Friday brings a different experience! About half of Lake Waynoka’s residents are part-timers. Through the week, most of the time, the water is disturbed only by boats quietly cruising or fishermen almost silently casting their lines along the shore. At dawn the sun casts its pink light on still waters. Most evenings even the normal daylight sounds of people coming and going give way to the sounds of nature. Light turns to dusk and the sun drops slowly from the sky. On clear, calm and sunny days the trees across the cove from our cottage often cast a perfect mirror image in the water. Hence the name of this blog: Reflections from Coveside Cottage.

The choice of a general title for this blog is intentional. I envision addressing a variety of topics and events. The one unifying theme hopefully will be that it is written from the perspective of a Christ-follower.  I hope to address matters of theology, practical Christian living, the Scriptures, and issues impacting the church and the world — how our relationship with God in Jesus Christ intersects our thinking, our responses, our behavior, our living. I write from a distinctively Wesley-Arminian perspective, and have a special interest in the history, life and challenges of the United Methodist Church. In the United Methodist Church I discovered what it means to have faith in Jesus Christ. Methodism has been my spiritual home since the eighth grade. Gratefully I have invested forty-three years of active ministry in and through the UMC. I believe that this ministry has not ended — simply entered a new season in retirement.

I write with the conviction that Jesus is God’s Son, Savior and Lord, and that the Scriptures are God’s Word for this and every generation. In Christ we find God’s grace and God’s truth incarnate (John 1:18). In the Scripture we encounter the primary source for discovering the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. I invite you to journey with me on this adventure. Along the way, I will look forward to your comments, thoughts and reflections as we discover the depths of God’s grace and truth revealed in Jesus Christ and how that his grace and truth impacts all of life.