Month: August 2023

Something caught my eye today while reading I Kings.  In chapter 7 we find the specs for the construction of Solomon’s magnificent temple.  When we get to verses 23 ff. we find the details for the giant laver in the courtyard.  Verse 23 reads as follows, “He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.”  Obviously the writer of Kings (We are not sure who that was.) wasn’t a mathematician or was into rounding off numbers.  I am not a mathematician so if I am wrong on this will a real mathematician please correct me.  If the laver was a perfect circle and I am sure it was, then the laver was either 31.4 cubits around and 10 cubits across or it was 30 cubits around and 9.55414  cubits across not 10.

Before someone gets sweaty about the Bible not being perfectly accurate please let me point out the function of Scripture.  It is not and was not intended to be a scientific or mathematical record of God’s dealings with His people.  The Books of I and II Kings and other books were historical records of God’s interactions with Israel.  In them we find stories of His guiding and often His frustration with humans.   In II Timothy 3 Paul said this about Scripture.  “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

The Bible is all about Jesus and grace and redemption and love and forgiveness and character building and nobility and hope and unselfishness.  It was never intended to be a math or science book.

Written by Roger Bothwell on August 12, 2015

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

 

One of the great things about summer is melons.   It is true; melons are shipped to our grocery stores all winter.  However, those just don’t taste good probably because they are picked while they are green in order to ship them to market.  Homegrown melons just taste so much better.  Maybe it’s the time of the year.  Who wants to eat watermelon for Christmas?  But on a hot summer day it is marvelous.

Some people like to put salt on their melons.  Others like their cantaloupe with a scoop of ice cream filling the hole in the middle.  Do you remember when stores would plug a watermelon for you, and if you did not like the taste they just threw away that melon and let you plug another?  Wow, just try that today!  Others pick out cantaloupes by smelling the stem end.

According to the book of Numbers one of the foods the children of Israel missed after they left Egypt was melons.  The wilderness where they wandered about for forty years was a pretty hot place and melons would have been great.  However, they did get manna every morning.  But even the best food in the world gets a bit boring when you have it every single day.  God has been so good to us.  He has filled the earth with a huge variety of good things.  What a gracious wonderful God!

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 27, 2000

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

In the beginning of the twentieth century one in every four trees on the Appalachian Mountains was an American Chestnut tree.  Historical records in Leominster, Massachusetts record seeing the mountain range in Leominster being white in the springtime when the chestnut trees were in bloom.  Today there are only young chestnut trees which grow to about five feet and then they die from the blight that wiped out literally billions of trees in the first half of the twentieth century.  There is one mature left in New Hampshire and small groves in Michigan, Wisconsin and California.

This afternoon during a walk in the forest I stopped by one of the five footers, soon to die, and rued its coming death.  It will never reach its potential.  It is like us.  Man was created with endless potential and then the blight came.  Now we get only so smart and then we die.  In this life we never will reach what we could be.  God needs to use the old army recruiting slogan “Be all that you can be” as an appeal to accept the gift of Jesus’ grace.  It is only by living forever that we will be all that we can be. But wait, if we live forever and continue to develop forever then we will never be all that we can be, because tomorrow will bring new opportunities and new experiences.

Is there something you wish you could do?  Have you ever longed to play the piano, organ or some other instrument and never had the time to learn?   What about golf?  Sure you will slice and hook in heaven.  It isn’t a sin.

Accept the gift.  Be all you can be.

Written by Roger Bothwell ono August 10, 2015

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

 

I have a set of books called “Harvard Classics – The Five Foot Shelf of Books.”   It is a collection of the greatest literature of the world.  It comes with a daily reading guide that suggests reading selections for the day.   I have all 51 books but my volume #7 does not match the set.  My set is blue and my volume #7 is brown.   Am I being anal because this bothers me?  On Amazon.com I can get a matching #7 for a very reasonable price of less than ten dollars including shipping.  My problem is why?  I already have #7.  The only reason I would purchase this is because of some mental quirk.  When I look at the set it is not perfect. This is ridiculous.  I need to see a shrink.

However, there is much to be said in favor of perfection.  In Hebrews 2 Paul tells us that because Jesus was perfect He is now able to be our high priest and save us by His grace. “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

I have known sincere, serious Christians who have been miserable because they were trying so hard to be perfect because they believed it was the only way to be saved.  However, the Gospel is very clear about our salvation.  It is a gift.  Accept it and live and then together with the Holy Spirit’s help, out of gratitude, strive to be like Jesus.  Enjoy the teamwork.

Written by Roger Bothwell on August 6, 2015

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

 

I am a believer in secondhand cars and houses.  Let someone else take the depreciation on the car and let someone else plant the grass and the shrubbery.  I am even wearing a secondhand shirt.  I have even performed marriages for couples who are getting a secondhand wife and a secondhand husband.  There is much to be said for experience and learning not to repeat certain mistakes.

There is one thing I am not high on.  That is secondhand spiritual experiences.  It doesn’t work to be a fan or devotee to another person’s experience.  I have heard people say, “If Pastor Soandso says it.  It has to be true.”   I’m sure Pastor Soandso is a good woman or man and what she or he said works for them.  But what is important is for each of us to build our own relationship with God and allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into understanding.  First and foremost, we should be followers of Jesus and not another human.  The only way this can happen is spending the time necessary to build that relationship with God.

Reading the Bible for oneself, praying over a passage, opening up one’s thought processes to new ideas is the way to make this occur.  Find what works for you.  It could be reading an entire book of the Bible through at one sitting.  It could be reading each day until a verse speaks to you.  That might result in reading chapters or maybe reading just one verse.  When you find that verse stop reading.  Make it your marching orders for the day.  Write it on a card and come back to it several times.  The result is you and God will develop a fresh one-on-one experience.  It is yours.  It is not secondhand.

Written by Roger Bothwell on August 5, 3015

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

 

This past weekend I was searching for a particular book.  I was very sure it was on my desk.  I looked and looked to no avail.  Finally I gave up and found another copy in the basement.  What is disturbing about this is I just now looked up at the shelf above my computer screen and there’s the book!  My wife did not take it and put it back.  No one else has been here.  This is pathetic.  I used to think old people’s senses eroded very slowly.  So why are mine slaloming?

Here are some other things that are leaving me.  People’s names – I am not talking about someone I met ten years ago and haven’t seen since.  I’m thinking about, what’s his name, with whom I graduated from high school.  Directions – I come to an intersection and don’t have a clue if Dunkin Donuts is to my right or left.  (Actually this is New England.  There is most likely one both to the right and one to the left.) Birthdays – well to be honest I never learned them in the first place.  Parking – I am so thankful for the panic button on the key.  It works.  The Minor Prophets in the Old Testament – I have to sing the song I learned in kindergarten to know where Obadiah is.

I know that God will restore me someday.  But in the meantime I seriously wonder about His sense of humor.  Does He chuckle just a bit at us once upon a time never-forgetters?   If He does it is in total love as He thinks of the brains He will someday give us.

We are going to a retirement party this evening for – I can’t remember who – just so the food is good.

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 11, 2013

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

I got really irritated with my credit union.  They started to nickel and dime me.   I have been with them for over twenty years and have never had an overdraft.  I didn’t this time.  It was just some silly fee they charged me.  It was nothing much but it was the idea of the thing.  So I went all ready to vent.  However, when I arrived there were a couple of what looked like teenagers as tellers and someone behind a desk who looked fairly unimportant from the way he was dressed.  I realized venting to any of these people would have been quite useless.  They didn’t do the crime and they had no authority.  So I held my tongue and very nicely and politely closed the account.  As I left I wondered how often we say things to make ourselves feel better and then regret the nastiness after we leave.  So I left not feeling bad.  I never said anything nasty.

James, Jesus’ brother, wrote in chapter 3 of his small epistle, “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.  Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.”   It is such good counsel.  I will sleep well tonight with no regrets.  Truthfully I have never been let down if I follow God’s counsel.  The only times life gets confused is when I forget to do or say what I know is God’s will.

So here comes the moral of the story, which you are bright enough to have already figured out; so I will not insult you by now detailing it.

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 18, 2013

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

One of my favorite things is not raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens.  It is late afternoon sun shining through the petals in our flower garden.  The accompanying long shadows add an artistic touch only duplicated at dawn from the other side.  If our world was not tilted on its axis we would not only have no seasons we could choose to live where late afternoon sun was continual.  There would be 12 hour days and 12 hour nights on the equator and continual day on the poles.  However, I must say I do love the variety of the seasons.  New England is a grand place because of the variety.  We used to live where there were no seasons and honestly I got a bit bored with 12 hour days and 12 hour nights and 60 to 80 degree days 365 days a year.  Variety is such a wonderful thing.

It is my impression that God loves variety.  There are so many different kinds of birds.  And of course there are so many different kinds of people. We come in so many shades and so many kinds of facial features.  Have you ever found someone that looks like you?  Some time ago I was in a waiting room sitting across from a man that looked just like my father.  I wanted to go over and hug him.  I think he grew uncomfortable because I kept staring.

God made each of us so very unique. Out of the billions of people that have lived and live now there has never been one exactly like you.  That is why God wants to save each of us.  If we are lost there will forever be an empty place in God’s heart.  You are not replaceable.  You are the apple of His eye.

Written by Roger Bothwell on August 6, 2013

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

This afternoon one of my friends told me a wonderful story about his father. His father (a dedicated Christian) was in the German Army on the Russian Front during WWII.  He was at an airfield where German soldiers were being evacuated as quickly as possible because the Russian soldiers had them surrounded and were coming in for the slaughter.  The available planes could only carry 30 soldiers.  They could see the Russian forces as they lined up to be counted off for the very last plane.  His father was number 31. But when the counter was distracted he pushed the man in front of him to squeeze closer so he could cross the line.  As he was getting in the plane the wind from the prop blew his hat away.  It was a major offense for a German soldier not to have his full uniform so he paused for a moment to contemplate whether to run for the hat or get on the plane which had started to taxi.  At that moment he was pushed into the plane and the door slammed shut.  And now comes the great part of the story.  There was no one behind him to push him and slam the door!  For over a year I had been his father’s pastor and had never heard this exciting story.

Sometimes when I am part of a congregation I look around and wonder what stories each person has.  During our lives each of us has had some very remarkable things occur.  If we were better listeners we could hear more great stories.  Unfortunately when someone is telling us a good story we can hardly wait for them to take a breath so we can tell our bigger fish story.  Our lives would be so much richer if we just listened more than we talk.

 

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 15, 2013

PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org

 

I had to have the air conditioner in my 12-year-old car recharged today.  It is about 95 degrees on the east coast and I just noticed the AC need.  Years have gone by and it slowly weakened without our noticing and then came a heat wave.  The weakness became very obvious.  This isn’t much different than so many other things about us.  We can neglect exercising and not really notice it until we suddenly are confronted with a rigorous task that leaves us panting and even worse chest pain.  We can eat just a bit more than we need each day and not notice until one day our cotton clothes look like Spandex.  We can neglect our walk with God and not notice until suddenly we come face to face with a serious personal loss and we have little faith or spiritual fortitude to carry the day.

This would be a good time to talk about the Grasshopper and the Ants. The ants knew hard times were coming and prepared.  As for the grasshopper we all know what he didn’t do.

We can be very blessed and live what appears to some to be a charmed life.  However, I do not wish to be a prophet of doom, I am just someone who has lived long enough to know that bad things happen to all of us.  You might be the best Christian in the world but it is not an insurance policy against personal loss.  Hard times will come.  You will have days that devastate you and challenge your deepest faith.  Once again I could now insult your intelligence and tell you what you need to do.  But you are bright.  You know not to let dust collect on your Bible.

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 19, 2013

PO Bo 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

rogerbothwell.org