Author: Ian Bothwell

When I think back on it I chastise myself for my youthful arrogance.  How could I have been so uncaring and disrespectful?  A few miles from my school in Uganda there was a huge outcrop of rocks. I spent the afternoon of my 30th birthday up there enjoying the quiet breeze that always came after our very regular afternoon thunderstorm. A fairly large python lived up there and would be fed by locals who worshiped it.  One afternoon I along with a few friends had the opportunity to capture it and take it to our school.  During the night someone came and took it back to the rocks.  I saw it there the following afternoons.  I knew the people revered that animal.  But for me it was just a large curiosity.  It was an adventure to drag it home.  It showed great disrespect for another man’s worship experience.

My students see me as an old man and on occasion ask me if I would do things differently if I had a chance.  The answer is “Absolutely, yes.”  I could write of many other things but will not turn this into a confessional.  My point is that it is important to respect others who see things much differently than we do.  How grand it is that God does not judge us by groups or by our associations but by our response to His wooing.  He and He alone knows the perspective of each soul.  He knows the vantage point with which we have seen life.  Each of us sees life and issues through our biases.  While we do not agree with others we need to respect them.  I have come to believe that 95% of the people I meet are doing the very best they know how.

Written by Roger Bothwell on December 2, 2009.

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

While rummaging around in an old box I came across a computer Scrabble game.  I have not played it in years and I wondered if I was still up for the challenge.  It gave me the option of setting the computer to novice, amateur, expert or pro.   It seemed rather cowardly to dumb down the computer so I set it on pro.   Wow, did I get trounced.  It accessed its internal dictionary and played seven letter words giving itself 50 point bonuses.  The next time I will move it down to expert and see what happens.

As I watched its score soar I was reminded of people I have known who thought they were smart enough to beat Satan.  The definition of sin is anything that will harm you or another.  By definition one is playing against the odds and if one plays long enough the house always wins. It was Jesus Himself who said, “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”   It is the same principle that says if you play with fire you will get burned.

God’s Word is very clear about certain things.  It was written by someone much smarter and wiser than we.  So what other than conceited arrogance would make us think we can be the exception?  Paul said, “The wages of sin is death.”  Note that there will be a paycheck coming our way.  It reminds us of the play Damn Yankees or Marlow’s Faust.  The protagonist sells his soul to the Devil thinking when the contract is up he can negotiate his way out of it.   The wise man learns to trust God.  Our heavenly Father has our best interest at heart.  If we ask He will rescue us even from our foolish selves.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 18, 2009

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

 

Last evening on America’s Got Talent a young man played the piano.  It must have been brilliant because he garnered enough votes to move on to the semifinals. The amazing thing was no one could hear him play.  A dancer inadvertently kicked a cable loose and the piano went silent amidst the accompanying cacophony.  Never-the-less thousands of people voted for him.  There must be a multitude of people with gigantic sympathetic hearts.

As we watched him play it was evident he was pouring out a tremendous amount of energy.  Perhaps people voted for his effort.  I thought of our voices crying out to a lost world that Jesus is coming again and longs to save all.  However, often our voices are crowded out by the noises of modernity.  There are so many pressures and pleasures to distract.  There are so many competing messages.  There are so many counterfeit messages designed to confuse.  Whenever our common enemy sees one of us nearing the eternal prize he pulls out centuries old heresies to distract and to take away the glorious simplicity of God’s call to us.

John the Baptist’s message was a voice crying out in a wilderness.  So in these last days the wonder of God’s love is often drowned out by an incomprehensible dissonance.  Our message is so plain a child can understand and yet so vast it will take us an eternity to grasp the enormity of the love that reached down to us.   We are loved.  Jesus offers us life.  It is a gift.  The result of receiving it transforms our lives.  We live to serve not to be saved but because we are saved.  Duty, obedience, trustworthiness, honesty, patience, kindness become the natural fruit of our grateful hearts.

Written by Roger Bothwell on August 20, 2009

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

 

A distinguished appearing elderly man sat across from me in a waiting room this afternoon.  He must have been eighty and bore himself with dignity.  The journal he was reading indicated a professional background.  I was curious and was about to open a conversation with him when he turned to the lady sitting beside him and let out a disgusting string of foul four-letter words; so much for my judgment.  I couldn’t have cared less after that.  I wondered how often people have good opinions of us until we open our mouths.

I have always been intrigued by Acts 4:13.  “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”  Peter and John looked uneducated but when they opened their mouths it was amazing.  They were quite the opposite of the old fossil (see I have down graded him) who sat before me.

Jesus is the master teacher.  He is the ultimate educator.  Three years with Jesus was a doctoral degree for these fishermen.  I am fascinated why Jesus rarely, if ever, appears in a list of the world’s great philosophers.  It is most likely because they don’t want to be outclassed.   Many philosophers take simple things and dress them up in multisyllabic words making them appear to be obscure.   Jesus took deep things and dressed them in parables of common day things so everyone could understand.   Now that I have said that I make myself appear to be stupid because I find the Sermon on the Mount to be one of the most difficult pieces of philosophy I have ever read.

Spend time with Jesus.  Let Him educate you by reading His word.  You will positively amaze people when you open your mouth.

Written by Roger Bothwell on October 13, 2009

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

 

My father was a school teacher.   His brother was a school teacher.  His brother’s wife was a school teacher.  My step-mother was a school teacher.  I married a school teacher.  As a school teacher I stand in the midst of a family tradition.  This evening I stood in a graduate class of thirty-two students and was amazed that almost half of them were leaving other careers and reeducating themselves so they could enter elementary classrooms.  The other half are already elementary teachers getting their masters’ degrees.

Teaching is a profession whose value is not defined by its remuneration.  Only in eternity will we begin to realize the value of what teachers do day after day.  The opportunity to reach into the mind of a child and to challenge and inspire them to greatness is without a doubt one of the most exciting things that can happen to anyone.  Yesterday our President used his bully pulpit to address the children of our land and he said, “Take responsibility for your education. Go to class and listen. Don’t let failures define you. . . .That is the promise of education in America, that no matter what we look like or where we come from or who our parents are, each of us should have the opportunity to fulfill our God-given potential.”

God gave our children pliable minds.  What they become, who they will be, very much depends not only upon what we say to them but what we are in front of them.  Each of us is a teacher no matter what we do for our paycheck.

One of my favorite authors wrote, “He who co-operates with the divine purpose in imparting to the youth a knowledge of God, and molding the character into harmony with His, does a high and noble work.” White E.G., Education, p. 19.

Written by Roger Bothwell on September 10, 2009

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

 

I enjoy getting email responses to the almost daily devotionals I send to you.  Most of the time the responses are pleasant reactions to a story that triggered a good memory for someone.  Occasionally I get negative replies. That’s okay.  I am certainly under no delusion that everything I write is wonderful.  Recently I got a different kind of response.  The writer requested that I write on different topics other than my usual “Jesus loves me” topic.   It reminded me of a church member who came to me after a morning sermon and said, “When are you going to start preaching about something other than “this love stuff?”   Sorry.  I don’t know anything else that is more important.  Some like to preach about prophecy.   Others like to preach about self-help psychology issues.  Others like to preach about the history of the Old Testament.  But I like my rut.  It’s a good rut.

Paul wrote in I Corinthians 2:2, “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Paul also spoke of the importance of the body having a head, arms, legs, etc.  We all can’t be the same.  We need people to speak of prophecy.  We need Old Testament scholars.  We need self-help material.   When we combine it all it makes for a healthy whole.  Therefore, God gives different gifts and different callings.  Through the years I have tried most of those other things.  However, I have never been good at prophecy.  Things rarely work out the way I believe they will.  As for self-help, I have enough trouble keeping myself disciplined let alone tell you how to fix your problems.   I have come to the realization I need to focus on the one and only thing I really do know.  Jesus loves you and me.

Written by Roger Bothwell on August 12, 2009

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

If it had been a plain grayish moth I would have merely crushed it for being inside my house, but this was a beautiful Monarch butterfly and ever so carefully I cupped it in my hands to take it outside.   As I watched it drunkenly reel around the patio into the blooming Jewelweed I realized my action was so like how we treat our fellow humans.   If someone is beautiful they get special treatment.  The pretty are given the finer seats.  If a plain someone enters we barely notice.

Even Jesus’ brother James writes of our behavior.  He said, “For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ‘You stand there,’ or, ‘Sit here at my footstool,’ have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”

In the vast majority of presidential elections the taller man wins.  There is no doubt there are many social advantages to being taller or prettier.  I have noted through the years there are many people I do not want to stand beside.  The comparison finds me wanting.  But I am encouraged by Peter’s speech in Acts 10:34.  He declares that God is no respecter of persons. This doesn’t mean He doesn’t respect us.  Quite to the contrary, Peter is saying God loves and treats all of us the same.  There are no persons or groups that are more special than others.  Sorry about that.  Most of us think God loves our group more than another.  I’m afraid not.  Actually that is really good news.

Written by Roger Bothwell on August 17, 2009

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

I must be having a midlife crisis.  But that was supposed to be fifteen years ago.  I’m late!

One of the first cars I ever had was a brand new 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang.  Some of you motor-heads will remember that was the year number because they introduced the Mustang so late in 1964.   It was brand new and cost 1900 dollars off the showroom floor.  Well, tonight I saw for sale a beefed up Shelby Mustang.  I should be over this!  I am too old to have my head turned by a car.  But this was so butch.  Just sitting there it looked and smelled like power.  It was so masculine; it looked like it needed to shave every morning.  No, I am not going to buy it.  I would be afraid to drive it because I would have to park it somewhere and people would touch it or worse ding it.  This is a car to put in the garage and just come out and salivate.

I know that some of you are thinking, “Why doesn’t he grow up?”  I have. That’s why I am not going to buy it.  But that doesn’t stop me from thinking it is beautiful.  It is good to recognize beauty, whether it be a flower, a child, a sunset, a woman, a painting or whatever.  God designed us to appreciate good things.  Just read the last two chapters of Revelation and see the beauty of our next home.  The Garden of Eden was beautiful.  Adam and Eve were beautiful.  The story of our salvation is beautiful even though parts of it are extremely ugly.  The cross – that was ugly.  The person on the cross – that was absolute beauty.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 17, 2009

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

 

I saw a guy standing in front of the magazine wall at Barnes and Noble stealing sniffs of aftershave. You know those cologne advertisement pages in magazines that you peel back and release wonderful scents.  He was sniffing and then putting the magazines back on the shelf. I figured he was stealing because the person who bought the magazine wouldn’t get 100% of the intended dazzle. I wondered if they should add a sniffing device to the exit door along with the magnetic machines designed to catch thieves.  A sales assistant could come running over and say, “Hey pal, you smell like Armani Code.”  Of course that would mean the machine would have to sniff you on the way in and remember you if you were wearing it upon entry.  They could call the machine Rover or Lassie. I understand they now have machines at airports that take your thermal picture to see if you have the flu.

There are few secrets left in this world.  There is an electronic trail of almost everything we write or do.  Those secret love emails you wrote to your sweetie are residing in some federal computer just waiting for publication.  Your super market has a record of your last box of Oreos.  So just in case you thought you were getting away with something, you’re not. One of my memory verses when I was little was Ecclesiastics 12:14, “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”   That was frightening.   You can be sure I was deliriously happy when I discovered I John 1:9.  It promises God will forgive EVERYTHING.   Phew!

Written by Roger Bothwell on May 7, 2009

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

 

While waiting for our pizza this evening at Chucky Cheese I enjoyed watching a four-year-old little boy beat the system.  He was playing Skee-ball. Actually the word “playing” isn’t quite the right word.  He was picking up the ball, running up the lane and depositing it in the 100,000 point hole. It didn’t take him long to rack up a million points and lots of tickets to spend at the redemption counter.  He totally maxed out his full potential. He had a sure thing.

I meet a lot of people filled with anxiety about their eternal future. Mentally healthy people want to live.  Eighty or ninety years really aren’t enough.  We don’t hit our full mental stride until seventy. If I charged a hundred thousand dollars for a ticket that guaranteed heaven, people would line up from my front door clear to San Francisco.  We long for surety.  We want a sure thing.

Well I can guarantee you heaven.   I really can.  I found a sure thing. It’s not based on money or deeds.  It is based completely on trust.  The following is better than a four-year-old dropping a wooden ball in a Skee-ball hole.  Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, 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.”  John 5:24

It’s the surest thing you will ever find on planet earth.   Please stop saying, “I hope I will be saved.”   We don’t honor God with that kind of talk any more than I would have honored my dad by saying, “I hope you do” after he promised me he would bring me something special.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 25, 2009

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