Author: Ian Bothwell

This afternoon I sat in a circle with twenty-four nine-year-olds and listened to them read their freshly written accounts of one of their dreams. If they couldn’t remember one, they could make one up.  I think most were made up. I heard dreams about mountains of candy and cookies.  One little girl dreamed she was Miley Cyrus’s sister and the Jonas Brothers made up a song just for her.  Not bad for nine.  The favorite topic was flying. Over half of them flew everywhere from over their houses clear out to Saturn.  I was intrigued by this because I often hear many adults talk about flying when they get to fantasizing about heaven.

I must confess that I doubt we will fly if God’s desire is to restore us to the original creation of Adam and Eve.   But hey, what do I know?  Not much of anything. When I left the seminary I knew so very much more than I know now.  As the decades have rolled by my list of sureties continues to get shorter and shorter.  People that know a lot fascinate me.  I’m probably just jealous.   It’s just that I have learned how difficult it is to really know something for sure.   I am mostly living by faith.  According to Paul faith is the substance of things unseen.   It’s those unseen things about which I don’t know much.

So what do I really know?  I know Jesus is my savior and that works for me.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 13, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

 

We have a marvelous old mansion on our campus.  The music department claims it as its own.  I think they laid claim to it because it has some very nice rooms for recitals.   This morning we held our winter graduation in its nicest room.  When the service concluded I found myself trapped in one of the rooms by a hoard of graduates, well-wishers and families of the grads. You can imagine how pleased I was when I spotted another door.  “Aha,” I thought.  “I can sneak out the back way.”  Upon opening the lovely ornate door I was confronted with a wall.  The door didn’t go anywhere.

I have been thinking about that door to nowhere and remembered John 10. Jesus refers to Himself as “The Door.”  It’s a great metaphor.  Doors can open the way to fabulous opportunities and doors can close behind us to keep us safe.  Do you remember “Let’s Make a Deal” where contestants had to select Door Number One, Two or Three?   Sometimes one of them had a Zonk.  I promise you Jesus never opens a door with a Zonk.   The door He opens is the door to eternity with never ending growth.  When we step through we leave behind a world of frustration, failure and fatalities.

At first I wanted to say going through that door is like entering a room filled with people who shout “Surprise” because it is your birthday.  But that cannot be because eternal life is a gift given now.  Jesus promised.  Jesus keeps His promises and that is no surprise.

Written by Roger Bothwell on Janary 12, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

 

Occasionally when I walk into my classroom I discover little by little it has become a wastebasket.  When people rip paper out of a spiral notebook small remnants of paper float to the floor like dandruff on a blue suit. Some pigs leave leftover bags and cups from Dunkin Donuts.  It is amazing what grows overnight in a dark locked room.  However it is not as bad as it seems.  I pick up the real wastebasket and ask everyone to please clean around their desk.  It usually takes less than sixty seconds for the room to look as if it had been thoroughly vacuumed.

I can only think of one other cleaning that takes less time.  John wrote, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Unfortunately just like my classroom, we once again become littered with the remnants of our characters.  That used to worry me.  My walk with Jesus was a legal, record-keeping experience.   What if I was killed without having an opportunity to ask for forgiveness?  What if I was lost for something like a scrap of paper on the floor, something I had done and not noticed and yet it was wrong?  Honestly, it was not a life filled with joy.   I knew something was wrong.  Christianity was supposed to be a joyful experience.  Something was missing.

One of the finest days of my life was the day I discovered John 5:24.  Jesus said, “He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”  That was the day I realized salvation is NOT the product of record keeping.  It is the fruit of a loving relationship with Jesus.  He will not fail to forgive me instantly each time I sin not because I mentally ask but because He knows I want to be like Him.  I discovered joy.  I had passed from death to life.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 6, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

While slowing inching along in a line of cars up to the drive thru window of a fast food restaurant, I amused myself by watching a seagull walking about with a florescent orange sticker adhering to his right wing.  In big black letters it read, “2 for $5.”   He was the avian equivalent to people walking about wearing a sandwich board.   I kept wondering just what two things I would get for my five dollars.  His sticker didn’t say.  Maybe for five dollars I would get two seagulls.

Truth in advertising has been a contentious issue ever since tobacco companies used to put actors on television pretending to be doctors and telling us cigarettes were good for us.  It reminds me of preachers on television telling us God will make us rich if we will send them one hundred dollars of “seed money.”  Since the beginning of history people have been swindling each other with deceptive offers.  The world has been, is and will be, filled with conmen. I think my seagull was a “congull.”  He wanted the five dollars for two of nothing.

Remember stories of people selling their soul to the devil in return for a short period of prosperity?  Eventually Satan arrives to collect and always the duped realize they have been had.   It wasn’t worth it.  Often we talk about salvation being the free gift of God’s grace.  While that is true it really doesn’t tell the entire story.  Jesus does desire something in return.  He wants us to understand if we obey His commands we will embark upon an eternal journey into fantastic undreamed of personal development.  What He offers really, really, really, really is worth it.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 14, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

The Chinese Placemat

While waiting for our food in a Chinese restaurant I read the paper placemat printed with a Chinese Zodiac.   I discovered I was born in the year of the horse and I am hardworking, resilient, wise and dependable.   “Absolutely right on,” I thought.  However then I read the descriptions of the people born in the year of the snake, goat and whatever.  I would have been thrilled with any of those descriptions.  Isn’t it interesting how we just love to believe it when we are told good things about ourselves?   Reality can be miles away but we eat up the flattery.

How about a legitimate dose of reality?  You probably are a better person than you think you are.  However, you are probably a worse person than you think you are.  Few of us know the truth about ourselves.  Because we have been sheltered or not exposed to various situations we don’t know how we would react if thrust into something bizarre.   We hope for the best.

Here is some more reality.  You are a sinner and have no rightful claim to citizenship in God’s Kingdom.  You disqualified yourself most likely prior to your adolescent years.  That is the bad reality.  Now, here comes the good reality.  We have a Savior.  His name is Jesus.  He and He alone has the power, the prerogative and the intent to make sure you become and stay a citizen.  He does it out of unexplainable  love for you.  Now here comes the great reality.  Once in the Kingdom remarkable transformations begin. They are slow and subtle.  Honesty replaces dishonesty.  Love for others replaces conceit.  As eternity passes you grow into something far more wonderful than any description on a Chinese placemat.

Written on January 19, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

 

When people lose a sense of the divine they also lose respect for humanity. Instead of our being the product of love forged from the earth into the image of our maker, humans become an end-product of an evolutionary process on its way to who knows what.  We cease to be special.  We are merely a step on a lonely road with no purpose other than to reproduce.   All the achievements of mankind are nothing but a byproduct to fill up our time after we have bred and are waiting to die.  What is so sad is some proponents of evolution are now claiming they have proved it and the rest of us who do not agree with them are less bright.   Some of them actually call themselves “the brights.” How utterly contemptuous.  They need such pride and self-grandeur because that is all they are ever going to have. Self-love is such an empty trap.

Now I have fallen into the same contemptuousness. Instead I need to care. For the God they deny loves them dearly.  Jesus’ words in John 5:24 are so wonderful.  The moment we make Him the Lord of our lives we have entered eternity.  We are already living forever on our way into a kingdom of unfolding promises.  A year ago I got a new knee.  In pre-op the doctor was leaning over me.  An instant later he said, “It’s finished.  It went well.”  I was in post-op.  In John 11 Jesus said His friend Lazarus was sleeping.  He woke him.

Paul writes in I Thessalonians 4 the following, “The Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: . .”

What a stark contrast.  Just who are “the brights?”

Written by Roger Bothwell on September 29, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

 

We inadvertently ended up at a bonsai demonstration.  For over an hour we watched a real artist take a four foot tall tree and ever so cleverly cut and trim so as to prepare to turn it into a bonsai beauty.  I winced as I watched him trim off branches that I thought should stay.  He explained that when given a choice of two always cut off the thickest one.  The thinner one will be more pliable.  After he had the branches he wanted to keep he took heavy gauge wire and first wrapped it around the trunk and then around the remaining branches.  He could then bend the wire now holding a branch and form it to grow in any direction or shape he wanted.

I could not but think of John 15 where Jesus said, “I am the vine.”  Jesus talks about pruning.  “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit.” After the man was finished he said, “Now come back in forty years and see how beautiful it will have become.”  I sat and thought of the things I have lost through the years.  Some of them I desperately wanted to keep.  But once gone, really gone,  now decades later I think I understand a little bit more.  Maybe I need to wait another forty years to really understand.

When you pray for something you really want and it doesn’t come to you, please be patient.  The Master Bonsai Artist is at work pruning and bending.  One of my favorite authors wrote, “If we could see the end from the beginning we would never question the way our Father has led us.”  Happiness in life so often is the fruit of trusting the Artist.

Written by Roger Bothwell on May 24, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

 

“To be or not to be” is, apart from Scripture, one of the most known literary quotes of all time.  While Ophelia watches Hamlet ponders existence.  Surely all of us have considered “being.”  We don’t remember being born because we were not there.   Very rapidly as the months elapsed that baby assimilated quadrillions of stimuli, merged them with inherited endowments and a self emerged.  We call that self “me” or “I.”  Being has begun with all its positive and negative characteristics.  The challenge that follows is to make the best “me” possible.  We begin to practice the “fine art of being.”  It is an art to be a quality person.

Quality does not happen by accident.  Quality is honed and perfected. Quality is the state of eliminating as much of the negative as possible.  The fine art of being is an awareness of our inner motives. It is the honesty to recognize I do not like someone because they are more talented than I, they are better looking than I, they are more charismatic than I, they are more popular than I.  It is a thankfulness for the gifts of another without wanting to usurp them.  It ultimately is the ability to stand before God recognizing that any hope I might have for eternity is to know eternity is a gift and nothing I have earned.  This places me on even ground with all around me and there is a knowledge that I am no better than another, regardless of my education, my wealth, my religion, my race or my anything.

The fine art of being is the ability to enhance the being of others about us. We are here to serve.  We are here to make each other better beings.

Written by Roger Bothwell on December 29, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

 

If you knew how to spell “Laodicean” you could be 40,000 dollars richer.   I know most of you are smiling because most of my friends have known this word since we were small.  Week after week preachers have been chastising us for being Laodicean.   “Laodicean” was the final championship word in the 82nd National Spelling Bee.  The problem with winning the money is we would also have had to have known “xebec,”  “menhir,”  “phoresy,”  “macenas” and many other words my computer tell me are misspellings because they are not even in the computer’s dictionary.

Usually I cannot write one of these daily devotionals without a misspelling. It was amazing to see these young people spelling words that make me feel most obtuse.  However in addition to being able to spell “Laodicean,” I can also spell “salvation.”   It is spelled J-e-s-u-s.   I can also spell “forgiveness.”  It is spelled J-e-s-u-s.  I can spell “peace.’  It is spelled J-e-s-u-s.  And yes I can spell “redemption.”  It also is spelled J-e-s-u-s.  That’s my spelling lesson for the night.

Just in case you have missed church on the weekends, the pastor has told us we were Laodicean.  Please turn to the beginning of the Book of Revelation.   There you will find a message for each of the seven churches of Asia Minor.  They correspond not only to actual cities but to time periods in the history of the Christian Church.   The last one, the period in which we live, is described as being lukewarm.  One can easily see how easy it is for a pastor to make us feel very inadequate when using this passage.

By the way the word “macenas” means a generous benefactor.  I found one. His name is spelled J-e-s-u-s.

Written by Roger Bothwell on May 28, 2009

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

rogerbothwell.org

 

I opened a box this evening whose contents were wrapped in a plastic bag. I could not but notice the warning printed on the bag to keep it away from children was printed in fifteen different languages.

Languages are fascinating systems of sound symbols which were eventually turned into visual symbols. Speech came before writing.  We are symbolic creatures that communicate with each other via a variety of symbols.  The words you are reading right now are nothing more than a batch of symbols that we have agreed upon to mean something to us.  It is an interesting process of taking a thought from my brain and putting it into your brain.  It is superior to a Vulcan mind meld because I don’t have to be near you.  I don’t even have to be alive to do it.  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John continually put their ideas about Jesus in our minds and they have been dead for almost two thousand years.

We also communicate with each other by our body language.  The expressions produced by our eyes and the curvature of our mouths often times speak louder than the words that come out of those mouths.  Often we communicate with others who do not know our language by the symbolic gestures of our hands and stance.

Jesus once said, “All men will know you are my disciples if you love one another.” I was vividly reminded of how tricky this can be.  Today in class I specifically said, “We show our love for God by how we treat each other.”  About two minutes later I verbally sliced up a student who irritated me.  As Paul once asked, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Written by Roger Bothwell on February 18,2009

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

rogerbothwell.org