Month: August 2024

Last evening I had the joy of standing in a storm.  It was exhilarating and primitive to feel the wind in my hair and hear the rush and roar in the trees above me.  When lightning flashed I could feel the thunder inside. I was fascinated that my dog was not phased in the least.  She stood with her nose in the air enjoying it as much as I.  Now this is a dog that will erupt with volcanic emotion should someone ring the doorbell or let there be a strange noise at night. Together we stood soaking up the rain like parched ground.  I do so wish I could talk to her about it and understand her rationale and feelings.

As I relished in the wonder of the storm I remembered Job 37:4, “After that comes the sound of his roar; He thunders with his majestic voice. When His voice resounds, He holds nothing back.”  It is a sumptuous thought.   When it comes to His love and making provision for our salvation, He gave everything.   He made Himself poor when He gave us Jesus.  There was nothing more precious in the entire universe.  He emptied all the treasure of His heart when Jesus became one of us.  It is no wonder the Gospels speak of a great darkness falling over the cross.  Sinful man should never have been allowed to see the fullness of Jesus’ agony.  That was something so special only the Father and the Son should have shared.

Thunder happens often when God is around.  There was Mount Sinai.  There was God speaking at Jesus’ baptism and check out the word “thunder” in the Book of Revelation.  The redemption of man and the eradication of evil are thunderous events.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 26, 2013

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It was a magnificent demonstration of excellent driving.  I was sitting across the street watching a fuel tanker truck driver back into a very busy very crowded service station between parked cars and pickups.  He put it right on the dime.  But wait.  When he got out of the truck he was not a he.  She was not tall and strong looking.  As a matter of fact she was quite chubby.  So much for my sexist assumption that that splendid exhibition of skill was performed by a man.  And if I had known it was a woman I would have expected a large rugged looking female.  Shame on me for my stereotyping.

I am suspicious I am not the only one who commits this social faux pas.  For convenience we categorize and pigeon hole people.  We think all Muslims are this or that.   We do the same for members of denominations that knock on our doors.  I have this thing about television preachers that are always begging for money.  But I will resist sharing my prejudiced thoughts.

It has always been this way.  Jews thought all Samaritans were lowly dogs.  When Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan He raised eyebrows because in many eyes there was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan.  Self love is an important part of our psyche and therefore we value those who belong to OUR group.  We are God’s chosen.  God is on our side. It takes just a bit more grace for God to save them than it does to save us.

I’m sure God must shake His head and go “Tsk” when He listens to our bias filled conversations.  Fortunately He forgives us because He knows it comes naturally with our sinful natures.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 25, 2013

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Ah, the shear luxury of a warm summer day.  Robins in the birdbath, petunias in the garden, chipmunks in the shade, white plumes decorating the blue sky all bathed by a zephyr. There are some days when it should be illegal to work and all should be mandated to just sit in the shade.  Dogs lulling in the grass and doves cooing from the maples.  It is a taste of eternity.

The tastes of eternity come in various flavors.  There is the extravagance of forgiveness. “He is faithful and just to forgive all our sins.” There is the comfort of never being alone.  “Lo, I am with you always.” There is the opulence of being a prince or princess of the universe. “Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”  There is the sumptuousness of being Jesus’ friend.  “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”  There is the lavishness of His generosity.  “Thou prepares a table before me.”

I just finished reading Ecclesiastes and my heart broke for Solomon who never knew Jesus.  He speaks of us all ending in the dust of earth with no different end for anyone.  But our end is different because it doesn’t exist.  There is no end for those who trust in Jesus. “Whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”

I love warm summer days when we are satiated with tastes of eternity.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 24, 2013

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I am sitting here watching a tick walk across my keyboard.  I am assuming he got here via my dog who sits by me as I write. I have a choice.  I can take it outside and release it back to the wild or I can dispatch it via a large variety of options of murder.   I am reminded of the famous fire and brimstone sermon by the Massachusetts pioneer preacher Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  The famous line is “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked.”  I have this abhorrent power over this tick.  He knows it not but he is doomed.

Wow, how grateful I am that Jonathan Edwards could not have been more wrong about God.  He does not abhor us.  Quite to the contrary Paul wrote, “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”  Romans 5:10.

If Jonathan Edwards had been correct there would be no Gospel just bad news. What concerns me is I know some Christians whose theology is very little different from Edwards.  They seem to think God is watching to catch them doing something wrong lest they be saved.  It is true that God is watching but just for the opposite reason.  He wants to catch us surrendering to Jesus.  If there is any way to squeeze us in He will find it.  He is a savior quite unlike me with the tick who is now history.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 21, 2013

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It was a brand new toothbrush.  I unwrapped it and carried it into the shower.  After a good scrubbing I opened the shower door and tossed it in the sink.  Never in a thousand tries could I ever have duplicated what happened.  It hit the rounded sink, where I wanted it to go, but then launched out in perfect arch into the toilet bowl.  So much for a brand new toothbrush. Alas.  I believe it was Robert Burns who wrote something about “The best laid schemes of mice and men” going awry.  No matter how carefully we plan something and prepare things can go wrong.

There are some who maintain God’s plan of redemption could not go wrong.  Sending Jesus here to die for us was a plan that could not fail.  Should that have been true then it was all a sham.  The fascinating horror was that Jesus was, in the words of theologians, peccable. He could have failed. The writer of Hebrews 3 tells us, “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.”

This was no playacting.  Everything hung in the balance as He cried out in the Garden of Gethsemane. How marvelous it is that God’s plan did work and we are the benefactors.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 19, 2013

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There is a flower seller with a large sign that says “We want to be your florist.”  There is one small issue.  The flower beds in front of his establishment are overgrown with grass and weeds.  It reminds me of a church I visited that advertised, “Come here and you will be home.”  I went.  I was never greeted nor welcomed. The advertising did not measure up to reality.  Or perhaps it was representative of their homes.

Being is so much more important than speaking. What we are is so much more important than who we are.  The rich young ruler asked Jesus the wrong question. He asked, “What must I do to be saved?”  He should have asked, “What must I be to be saved?”   In Romans 1 Paul wrote, “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

History is filled with lives of God-like people who, while never knowing the Gospel, recognized God’s true nature and they allowed themselves to be drawn to it and to be molded by it.  Unknowingly they became individuals God could trust throughout eternity.  They are not saved by individual actions of good nor lost by individual acts of evil.  They are saved because their actions are but the fruit of a character that automatically spreads love, generosity and kindness.   They are people who not only meet others needs but anticipate the needs of others.   It sounds like a huge task but can come as easily as an apple tree producing apples.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 17, 2013

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On a corner property connected to our college is a hillside, once the home for settlers who braved moving westward from the safety of Boston.  They paid a harsh price for their adventure.  In 1675/6 a war party of natives came burning, killing, scalping and capturing.  Only ashes were left behind.  An engraved stone that memorializes that hillside.  The stone is small considering the magnitude of what happened to those people.

Memorials are interesting.  We try to build something that will keep us from forgetting. Yet, as hard as we try, our carved stones always seem inadequate, no matter how well designed.  Stones with names can never compensate for the loss of flesh and blood.  Memorials in time seem more meaningful than stones because time cycles round and round.  Each time the day returns we remember.  This is so much better than a stone that will fade away in the wind and rain.

God wanted us not to forget where we came from.  We are not the product of an impossible chain of favorable mutations.  We are the fruit of His loving design.  When Moses descended Mt. Sinai with the tablets of stone, there tucked in the middle was the fourth commandment.  It started with the word “Remember”.  God had established a memorial in time.  Every Sabbath day we are to stop our commerce and remember Eden.  It became even more meaningful at the Cross.  That wasn’t just a god from heaven who died for us.  It was THE GOD who made us and paid the price for our failures by becoming one of us.   John 1.

Memorials are, without a doubt, very important.

Written by Roger Bothwell on May 30, 2011

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The  New England roadsides are lush with Daylilies and Black-eyed Susans.  Stonewalls that line fields and yards are accented with these yellow and orange exhibitionists showing off their splendor to all who pass by.  One would have to be visually or mentally challenged not to appreciate their glory.  If they could sing they would surely change the words to “You Are So Beautiful” to “I Am So Beautiful” and serenade us on our way.   Shamelessly they beg us to take their picture so we can enjoy them six months from now when the days are short and the stonewalls are smothered with snow.

If I had been Moses and quested to write an account of creation I would write something like this.  “The Lord God planted a garden in the east and called it New England; and there He put the man whom He had formed.  Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight.”

Living the abundant life is living with our minds wide open to ingest each day’s gifts.  Far too soon the greens of the oaks and maples will darken indicating the summer is waning and once again God will take out His palette and paint the hills and lanes with maple reds and birch yellows.  Those are good days.   But I am not yet hungry for them.  Today the table is set with the feast of summer.  It is more than enough to satisfy anyone’s taste.  Today is the day to sing Psalm 118:24, “This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 12, 2011

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There is this great sound and light show each night outside of Cairo  There under the desert sky you sit for a warm grand evening of Egyptian history as lights play back and forth on the various pyramid and the sphinx.  Amid exotic music a voice booms out across the sands reliving the succession of Pharaohs and the glory that once was Egypt.

While sitting there one evening waiting for the show to begin my wife and I got to talking with some other tourists.  The conversation begain with the usual stuff you ask fellow travelers.  Where are you from? How long have you been here? Where to next? Bust very soon the conversation focused on a place we had in common and ended up with the startling fact that we were talking with my wife’s best friend’s music teacher.  And we were wowed with just how small our world is.

Have you ever wondered as you look at a crowd of strangers how many people in that group know someone you know?  I didn’t used to do that.  But I do now.

It all gives me pause to think about what it will be like to live forever.  We have been promised eternal life by Jesus.  And if we accept that gift we will have not only centuries but millenniums to  meet others who have also accepted that wondrous gift.  If in just a few decades of life we are able to meet enough people that we can make chance contacts in some foreign land just think how many people we will get to know and meet in the new earth promised to us at the end of the book of Revelation.

Written by Roger Bothwell

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The afternoon sun was low behind the grandpa and his grandson.  They were enjoying their long shadows on the sidewalk.  Both of them were very tall.  Jumping in front of grandpa, the little boy noted with great joy that he and grandpa had become one.  Thus they stayed as one as long as they were aligned.  Soon the six-year-old saw the fun of sticking out his arms and laughing as their shadow sprouted four arms.

Psalms 91:1 reads, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”

Just before His death Jesus prayed for us, “I pray for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”  John 17: 20-21.

The goal of every Christian is to truly be one with our Maker and Savior.  We long to rest in His forgiveness and experience the fullness of His mercy, an experience that can only occur if via the power of His Spirit we align ourselves with His will.  Our shadow merges with His and when others see us they see Him.  “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”  Matthew 5:16.

Written by Roger Bothwell on Sept. 15, 2020

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