Month: January 2025

It is not uncommon to find in old books small pieces of paper filled with nonsense scribbling.  What fun it is to find such treasures.  Many of us have them tucked away in our books.  What precious reminders they are–  reminders of a four-year-old thrusting into your hands a tiny blue piece of paper with wondrous markings!  Oh, how we value those “love notes.”

Have you ever considered that our attempts to communicate with God must be on the level of scribbling?  The thought of forming any sentence either elegant or plain to present before the Creator of the universe fills one with an overwhelming sense of inadequacy.  Praying almost seems an act of arrogance.  Yet God invites us to do so and is pleased when we take Him up on his invitation.  Psalms 91:15,16 says, “He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.  With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

Perhaps the books of heaven are filled with small pieces of paper loaded with some very precious scribblings.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 29, 2002

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Mandy, the family’s precious black lab, bounded into the house and startled everyone with the sight of light coming out of her mouth.  It was amazing.  She had real light originating from her mouth.  It was really spooky, but just as suddenly she dashed outside again but this time with the family close behind.  After all this was just too weird.  What they saw next was amazing.  She was running around the yard snapping at fireflies and catching them.  The light was the phosphorescent material left on her teeth from her strange activity.

Light coming out of someone’s mouth is a fascinating idea.  That is exactly what happened when Jesus was here.  The things He said.  The sermons He preached.  The stories He told all enlightened the world.  He was the light of the world.  He told us how much the Father cares.  He told us we can live forever if we will only accept His gift.

And we can do just what Jesus did.  Light can come from our mouths.  We can tell the world the Good News.  Just think: light coming out of our mouths!

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 30, 2002

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How quickly the world changes; when I was a boy we bemoaned the fact that the great herds of bison were gone.  Bison had become so rare I never saw one outside a zoo until we visited Yellowstone.  It was a big deal to see one standing by the road.  I say this because yesterday I bought a bag of dog food which had for its primary ingredient bison meat.  She loved it.  She scarfed it down so quickly I thought she had inhaled it. So much for all those cornmeal based foods.

When we lived in Africa the primary ingredient in dog food was elephant meat.  One of our mission families had a little boy who loved the elephant meat.  He would come home with elephant breath after sneaking over to the neighbor’s porch to gobble up the contents of the dog’s bowl.

What we eat and don’t eat is a fascinating topic.  I have friends who are very omnivorous, while others are vegetarians and others vegans.   In Leviticus God gave the children of Israel a list of eating dos and don’ts.  Because He is the creator of our bodies He knows what is best for us.  Unfortunately, instead of being health laws they turned them into religious taboos.  And there are many people who still treat them as such.  In Mark 7 Jesus addressed the issue by saying, “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.”  It is no wonder the leaders felt Jesus had to go.  This was in direct conflict with centuries of belief.  For Jesus, how we speak and how we treat others is everything.

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 20, 2012

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The graying college professor was watching television—but not really.  He was casually interested but not enough to give it his full attention so he pulled a volume of the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica off the shelf and began to browse.  He came across an article on Nebuchadnezzar. Knowing Nebuchadnezzar was once the king of Babylon, which is modern day Iraqi, gave the article a modern day connection.  The article even gave the name of Nebuchadnezzar’s younger brother Nabo-sum-lisir.  The old prof had never seen this before and thought it would be great fun to put this name on his door at school along with the promise of a ten-dollar reward to the first person to correctly identify him.  Just to make sure it was not too easy he went to www.google.com and typed in Nabo-sum-lisir.  In eight tenths of a second there on his computer screen was a copy of the very page in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.  Obviously, he did not offer the reward.

The lesson is obvious.  If anyone with an Internet connection can now identify Nebuchadnezzar’s younger brother in the blink of an eye, the wonder and mystery of God knowing everything about us is gone.  More than ever it makes us grateful for the promises of grace and forgiveness because with God there are no secrets.  “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing….” Eccl. 12:14.

“It is by grace you have been saved.”  Eph. 2:5  Lord, we are so grateful!

Written by Roger Bothwell on January 28, 2003

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Out on the lawn a gang of crows was tearing up a section of the school lawn—really tearing it up.  In a few minutes this pack of excavators made a section of lawn about five feet by six feet look like it had been worked with a rototiller.  The crows had discovered a colony of grubs.  Lunch was on the table.

That lawn would have been in jeopardy if the grubs had not been discovered and been eaten.  The crows messed up the grass but actually saved the lawn.

Sometimes God does that with us.  He allows certain things to happen to us that we think are devastating but He does so because in His infinite wisdom He knows something in our life has to change or we are heading for something even worse.  Peter, who saw a lot of bad things happen wrote, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”  I Peter 1: 6-7.

Written by Roger Bothwell

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Our black lab has established a ritual.  If she spots one of us going upstairs she hastens to get on the stairs right in front of us and then stops.  It’s time for a tummy rub.  I’m not sure how long she would stay there.  She outlasts me and I ultimately have to nudge her out of the way.  As we rub her tummy she gets this far off look of ecstasy.  All is right with the world.

She reminds me of my relationship with my heavenly Father.   Every time I see an opportunity for a blessing I rush to the occasion.  Like our dog I would linger forever.  I wonder if God ever has to nudge me out of the way and say, “Hey, you’ve had enough for now.”

Do you remember the last words of the hymn, “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”?   They ring in my ears, “Bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.”  I am not aware of ever getting enough.  I am being greedy?  Should I not voluntarily step aside without the nudge, if there is a nudge?  Perhaps I would if I thought I was taking from another.  But the joy of having an omnipresent Father is that His attention to me does not take away from you.  We can both enjoy all the attention He has to share.  I think the only thing that bothers me is the question of greed.  Could my desire for more of Him indicate a deep selfishness?   In John 6:35 Jesus said, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger. . . ” Someday?

Irony.  The quest for godlikeness is, at least for me, filled with many ironies.

Written by Roger Bothwell on January 31, 2011

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The gas station attendant walked up to the car and said, “Sorry we are out of regular.  But I can fill you up with premium for the price of regular.”  It was like going into a store for plain vanilla and coming out with Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.

So often our spiritual life is like that.  We pick up our Bibles to study and as we start reading the Lord often gives us “premium for the price of regular.”  Passages like “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.  For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.  In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”

Wow!  He blessed us with every spiritual blessing.  He chose us to be blameless. He adopted us according to His good pleasure.  He lavishes us with wisdom and understanding.  And best of all it is free.  That is premium.  That is Cherry Garcia for the soul.

Written by Roger Bothwell

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There was a very popular story in the Middle Ages about a dog named Gelert.  One night his master returned home to find his child’s cradle overturned and Gelert was covered with blood. Immediately his master killed him only to turn around and see the body of a dead wolf that had attacked his child and had thusly been killed by Gelert.  It was then that he found the baby still alive under the cradle. There are several variations to the story but the message in all of them is the same. Wise people do not act without gathering as much information as possible. How fortunate we are that our heavenly Father knows everything about us.

In a time of edited media clips and sound bites it is relatively easy to make one’s opponent say anything we want them to say and then watch the masses rise up with so little real information. We do it in the arena of politics, in the world of religion with one group pitting itself against another, and we do it in our personal relationships at work and at home.   Have we ever been riled because someone told us a certain someone said something we didn’t like to hear?   We were not there.  We did not know the context.  And we did not hear the tone of the voice which can actually reverse the meaning of a sentence.

Revelation 12:7 speaks of war in heaven; an almost impossible thing to imagine.  Lucifer, the master of sound bites, the subtle raising of an eyebrow, tonal inflection, and outright lies had attacked the throne.

The Gelert legend continued that the master buried Gelert with great fanfare and honor.  But he never smiled again.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 27, 2012

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Six weeks ago one of my very best friends gently went to sleep in my arms.

Mandy, our black lab, had been with us for over thirteen years.  Needless to say, it was a very emotional moment, so much so that I have not been able to write about it til now.  I still am not able to say much because she was to me the perfect dog. Her devotion and love were beyond description.  We spent so much time together roaming the mountains of Massachusetts.  But the years took their toll and finally she just ran out of gas.  The last few days she needed assistance just to stand up.  The vet came to our house and Mandy closed her eyes in the comfort of home.

The reason I can now speak of it is that this afternoon Annie has come to live with us.  She too is a black lab.  So here we go again.  The next few weeks we will be soaking up puddles and trying to keep the house from being chewed to pieces.  For the past few hours she has bounded about the house sniffing everything.  She climbed the stairs to the second floor but getting back down was very scary.  It’s much easier going up.  We are wondering if we will get much sleep tonight.

While I do not believe Jesus died to save dogs I do believe Jesus will do everything possible to make heaven great for us.  Therefore, I anticipate opening the door of my heavenly home to see Mandy waiting for me.  Some of my friends tell me I should anticipate about a dozen other dogs I have loved through the years.   If I add thirteen or fourteen years to my present age this will be my last dog.  Surely God smiled the day He made dogs and even though Genesis doesn’t mention it, I am sure He said, “That is very, very good.”

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 9, 2010

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It was a dark moonless night on our street that has no street lights.  (I’m glad.  We can see stars.)  Our black lab was outside making her final night rounds.  Often she sits in the darkness staring off into the forest.   I’m sure she hears night sounds that beckon her.  Often I just allow her to stare as long as she wants.  But this particular evening I went out to call her in.  Since it was totally dark I turned on the flash light app on my phone and scanned the yard.  She was nowhere to be seen.  Was this the night she couldn’t resist the call of the wild?  Walking about the yard calling and peering under the rhododendrons I began to be concerned.  Where could she be?  Turning this way and that I looked and called.  Suddenly I felt a nudge on the back of my leg.  She had been with me all the time following me from bush to tree.  I’m sure she wondered what was wrong with me.  When I turned, she turned.  She’s a good dog.  She is so totally black on a moonless night she is invisible.

There are times when our life seems so dark.  Things do not go well.  Dreams are dashed.  We lose someone we love.  Our finances aren’t thrilling.  We pray and only hear silence.  Where is God?  Where are His promises?  Finally after much searching we feel a nudge.  He was there all the time.  We just couldn’t see Him.  His promise is true.  “Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the world.”  He’s a good God.   After all He told us to call Him Father.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 12, 2016

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