Roger Bothwell

My wife asked me to get the cinnamon out of the pantry.  Being the good guy that I am I opened the door and stared and stared.  For all that I wanted to help I could not see any cinnamon.  Finally I said, “There isn’t any here.”  Now came the bad part.  She nudged me aside, reached out and picked up the cinnamon. How could that be?  How could I stand there with it right in front of me and I could not see it?

I know lots of people who claim to have read the New Testament including John and still worry about being good enough to be saved.  They tell me they are afraid they might be lost over one small sin they don’t know about! They are as bad as me looking right at the cinnamon and not seeing it.  John tells us in chapter 5 that Jesus Himself said, “Truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”  How can it be any plainer?  Believe in Jesus and skip judgment.

Then there is Ephesians 2.  “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”   It isn’t our doing!  And let’s try Galatians 5, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”  The yoke Paul is speaking of is the yoke of salvation by our behavior.

So dear cinnamon seekers, allow me to nudge you and point out to you the Good News that is right in front of you.  It isn’t about us.  It is all about Jesus.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 25, 2014

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

She sat across from me in a waiting room and I could not but stare at her tattoo.  She appeared to be about 55.  She was probably younger but her tattoo hinted at a hard life which puts years on people.  I see teenage girls smoking and I think the anti-wrinkle cream people must be thrilled when they see a teenage girl smoking. She will probably be a life-long customer. The waiting room lady’s tattoo was boldly displayed on her sternum.  It was a purple and reddish human skull with a snake crawling in one eye socket and coming out the other.  It seemed just perfect for attracting a man if he were a psychopathic serial killer. Wow, to each her own.

There seem to be tattoos everywhere and I wondered what I would get if I would.  Would it be my wife’s name?  Probably not since she has a man’s name.  Would I get “Mom” on my no longer impressive bicep?  Then I remembered an old Fanny Crosby song, “Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word.”    II Corinthians 3:3 is a fabulous verse.  Paul wrote, “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”  That is so perfect.  We are letters from Christ hoping that when people read us they will discover the sweetness of salvation.

Emily Dickinson, our Massachusetts poet, wrote, “This is my letter to the world, that never wrote to me, the simple news that Nature told, with tender majesty.” I want my letter to the world to be the simple news that Jesus told.  God loves us with tender majesty.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 24, 2014

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

Recently I watched one of my friends put on his laced shoes merely by forcing his foot past the laces and into the shoe.  It was fast and efficient.  True, he did have to raise his heel up and down a few times to get the now bent back into place.  But it was so much better than bending down to untie them, put them on and retie them. I do not do what he did.  That is until I watched him and now I do it for most of my shoes.  The backs of my dress shoes are just too hard to accomplish the deed.

The reason I had never done it goes back 65 years.  My mother forbade me.  She said it ruined my shoes.  And so I had been obeying her ever since.  But wait.  I am an adult – an old one and I buy my own shoes.  If I want to break down the backs isn’t that my prerogative?  Being that my mom passed away a few years ago she will never know that I am now doing it.

So how many other things am I doing merely because my mother taught me so?  And now that I am a big person can I not reevaluate the whys and the merits of certain behaviors and beliefs?  If there is not a moral principle involved and it will not harm anyone, may I change?

I am most grateful for what my mom and dad taught me.  Their ideas have served me well.  But this is not 1940 and I am paying my own bills and do have an obligation to understand why I do or do not do certain things.  As Paul wrote, “When I was a child I thought as a child, but now that I am a man …”   I Cor. 13.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 23, 2014

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

I remember it as if it were yesterday.  My father, a school teacher, who always went to school in suit, white shirt, tie, and a white handkerchief in the left top pocket of his suit coat, came home and announced it was time for me to learn to ride a bicycle.  I was so excited as I climbed aboard my sister’s bike and off we went with him running behind.  It was elation beyond words as the wind blew through my hair.  These were the days before helmets and knee and elbow pads. This was blood sport and I did not disappoint.  I looked back over my shoulder, a big mistake.  He knelt down beside me and took the white handkerchief from his suit coat pocket and wiped off the gravel and blood.  And then he said to me, “Good job.  Look how far you came.”

I did not stop being his son because I fell down.  Neither do we stop being part of God’s family when we fail.  Quickly He comes to our side and with the white robe of Jesus’ righteousness He wipes us clean and says to us, “Good job. Look how far you have come.”

The Christian walk is not about being perfect.  It is about falling, being wiped clean and getting up for another try.  It is about going farther between falls.  And sometimes the falls are spectacular but that just makes getting up so much more courageous.  It is true Jesus said to the woman taken in adultery to go and sin no more.  We must never forget He also said, “Neither do I condemn you.”

Happy riding.  Go far.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 10, 2015

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

This afternoon the checkout lady at the Dollar Store, who appeared to be very close to seventy, was being rudely ordered around by another employee who was all of seventeen.  With tears welling up in her eyes the elderly lady attempted to help me.  The extent of her mental state evidenced itself when her trembling hands gave me an extra five dollar bill in my change.  My dilemma was to further upset her by pointing out her error or take the easy way out and pocket the extra five and say thank you.  Or was I merely justifying an attempt to keep the five?  The human heart is a deceitful thing and works its very best havoc on its owner. The most difficult person to know is the one we see in the mirror.

For over seventy years I have been trying to know me.  But like Paul in Romans 7, I regularly do things that disappoint me.  “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

I don’t think it was about an extra five dollars.  I am not a rich man, but really five dollars?  What would a man give in exchange for his soul?  Five dollars?   That’s trading your soul for one large extra thick chocolate malt!  But what if it were for five million dollars?  Then I would rationalize how much good I could do for my church.  I could make quite an impressive list of good deeds after I took an around the world trip with my wife.

So what did I do?  If I tell you what and why I would most likely be trying to assuage my conscience.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 11, 2015

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

When God asked Adam about eating the fruit Adam blamed Eve.  Surely Eve blamed the serpent and I’m sure the serpent blamed Satan and Satan blamed God.  That has been his game-plan right from the beginning.  Tornados and earthquakes are called “Acts of God.”  The rationale is that God could have stopped them had He chosen so.  That’s true.  He could have.  However, God is in a battle with Lucifer (Satan) and should God continually intervene in the affairs of earth this pail of pain could never be put to an end.   Lucifer would take credit for all the good and continue to smear God’s character.   This drama has to play itself out to the bitter end so when it is put to an end it will never happened again.  Everyone must know that God is love and just and wants the best for His children.  Does God ever have a good day?  He has to witness millions of events every day that are not His will but are the bad choices of Adam’s children.

Jesus came to pay the redemptive price for sin.  Death is the natural consequence of our sins.  He paid the price but cannot accept the blame.  That has to go to the one who started the mess.

In our ignorance and inability to see the big picture we are confused and continually ask, “Why me?”   Bad things happen to good people.  We and our choices are the lesson book to be studied for all time.  Our contribution is part of an intellectual vaccination that will ultimately end pain and death forever.   While Satan might desire us to think so, God is not responsible.  There are universal issues beyond our comprehension.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 19, 2014

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

Many years ago when I was the commencement speaker at Atlantic Union College, the platform party had to weave its way through the college orchestra. When I stepped onto the platform I heard someone calling to me, “Sir, sir, my music stand.” Unknowingly I had snagged his stand on my academic robe and had dragged it up the stairs onto the platform. It wasn’t my finest moment.  Then there was the occasion when performing my first baptismal service in a church where I was the new pastor.  I thought I had descended all the stairs into the water.  I had not.  The next step found me face down in the water in front of two thousand people.  Don’t you just love moments like that?  They are better when they happen to someone else?

When most people fall down in front of an audience they are embarrassed and try to laugh it off.  But there is another kind of falling that isn’t so funny.  Paul speaks of it in I Corinthians 10.  “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” He obviously isn’t talking about falling into a baptistery.  The real danger isn’t the big sins we easily recognize.  It is those subtle defects of character.  Too often we only think of sin as breaking one of the Ten Commandments.  The really dangerous sins are the insidious moments of smug moral superiority, justifying being selfish, jealousy of another’s gifts or never having enough when we already have plenty.

Here’s a Good News Bulletin. Just as a parent doesn’t expect their one-year-old not to fall down so Jesus knows we are going to fall.  But like a great parent He is there to pick us up.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 18, 2014

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

While the tenth commandment forbids coveting perhaps it should also have included envy.  According to the dictionary coveting focuses on our desire to have something another has while envy is a negative feeling directed toward a person, perhaps the person who has what we covet.  Envy and not coveting is listed as one of the seven deadly sins. It is perhaps the queen of sins for it has absolutely no gratification.  Greed might make you rich.  Gluttony might get you a great meal. Lust might find you temporary satisfaction but envy has no benefit even short lived.

Envy feeds on the destruction of others.  Often it causes us to be hypocrites and we pretend to celebrate when something good happens to another but we feel the best when something bad happens to them.  It is not enough for us to succeed.  We don’t want success for anyone else except perhaps our children.  From them we feed and take vicarious satisfaction from their accomplishments.

Lucifer’s great sin was a combination of coveting and envy.  “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”  The irony of this is God’s goal for each of His children is for us to be like Him.   The secret ingredient is love. If Lucifer had loved God he would have continued to grow.  How dramatically opposite that Jesus left His throne on high to become one of His creations.  He came to us poor.  He died for us poor.

Envy is such a wicked thing.  It blinds us to the reality that when others succeed we increase.  The worst sins are way inside us where we live.  The best virtues are way inside us where God wants to live.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 17, 2014

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org

 

Friday night when taking the dog out for the last time for the day I almost stepped in my Father’s Day present.  The FedEx man left a shoofly pie on my doorstep.  I barely escaped squishing molasses and brown sugar into a pancake instead of a pie. Having grown up in eastern Pennsylvania meant that I grew up eating lots of Amish food.  Shoofly pie is by far one of their very best contributions to the civilized world.  It is a marvelous concoction of pie crust layered with molasses, cake and crumbly brown sugar.  It is going to be available on the Tree of Life mentioned in Revelation.

It was an amazingly appropriate gift.  The more we know about someone the better we can gift them.  When we know their tastes in food, fashion and books we can select just the right item for the occasion.  Now just think for a moment about who knows you best.  Who knows so much about you that He knows the number of hairs left on your balding head?  Who actually lives inside you and knows your thoughts?  (That’s one reason why our prayers don’t have to be verbalized.  He already knows what we need.)  Therefore, when He selects a present for us it is absolutely the most perfect thing that can be given and He plans on giving us lots of presents.   Note in Ephesians 2 we read, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us.”

We are so blessed.  How could anyone say “No” to an offer like this?

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 17, 2014

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

 

We have all done it.  Someone is hurting or suffering from a great loss and we say to them, “If you need anything just call me.”  Really?  Anything?  How about making my car payments or my mortgage?  How about paying off my medical bills?  Now I do realize and so do those in pain realize that you are speaking of something within reason.

This happened to my sister this weekend.  Her very sick neighbor came home from the hospital and my sister said the “anything” thing.  “Oh,” her neighbor said, “Could you bring me some egg custard.”  This sounds simple enough except my sister did not know what egg custard was (obviously my mother never made it for us) and my sister did not find it at her supermarket.  Fortunately we live in the wonderful age of the Internet and a Google search for egg custard provided a recipe.

I am reminded of Jesus’ parable of the midnight knock on the door.  It’s found in Luke 11 and it contains one of my favorite verses.  “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”  God, our Father, is a giver.  He cares about our needs and is anxious to help.  For some reason that I do not understand often times we have to ask. Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”  Maybe it has something to do with our adversary the devil, who accused God of over giving to Job. So go ahead and ask.  If it is good for you, you will get it.  If it isn’t you won’t.   I hope you like custard.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 16, 2015

Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org