Author: Ian Bothwell

Our granddaughter works in the very space my wife worked in thirty years ago.  My wife told her to look for the face of Jesus in the wood grain on the back of one of the doors.  This evening we received a report that the college put a mirror on the back of that door but one can still see Jesus peeking over the top.   I kind of like that.  Jesus holds up a mirror for us and if we look carefully perhaps we can see Him in our reflection.  If we see someone who cares, someone who is honest, someone who is anxious to help others then we see Him.  It is surprising how good He looks.

I realize there is hesitancy on our part.  We are very aware of our limitations and faults.  No one need point them out.  We know!  So we balk a bit at the idea that Jesus can be seen in us.  Paul addresses this very issue in I Corinthians 1.  He wrote, “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.  But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”  That’s us.  We are the not so wise, the not so influential.  However, the wonderful point is He chose us.

We rarely see ourselves as others see us.  If we have a zit that is all we think people see.  Most people never notice the zit because they are blinded by our gracious care.  Or, horrors, our indifference.  It’s up to us.  We choose what they see.  Before leaving your room in the morning, take a peak in your mirror to see whose looking back.

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 12, 2016

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The most beautiful thing in the world is a life well-lived.  Standards and ideals of physical beauty change with the seasons of a culture but goodness and unselfishness are eternally valued. We are told by hawks that gracious accommodations made to our enemies are signs of weakness to be misunderstood by our foes and thus embolden them to aggression.  But was it not Jesus who told us to turn the other cheek?  Was it not Jesus who never struck back when He could have called legions of angels to avenge Him?  Matthew 26:53.  It was the Prince of Peace who divided history.  True strength of character is manifested in compassion and understanding.  True wisdom is quick to apologize and to learn from words spoken in haste.

The Sermon on the Mount is the manifesto for a life well-lived.  Paul follows with Ephesians 4,  “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” This is not psychological pabulum.  This is the secret of happiness.  To be quick to forgive is the power to heal one’s wounds.  Should someone take advantage of us shame on them, not shame on us for being kind.  Desires for revenge and plans for retaliation are toxins that eat away our vitality more ferociously than any cancer.

I have yet to meet someone who wants to be ugly.  Yet so often we choose to be ugly by our allowing others to determine our behavior.  Some of the most physically unattractive persons I know are the most beautiful people in the universe.  They are not merely decorated but instead are fountains of eternal beauty.

Written by Roger Bothwell on August 4, 2016

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The signs of senescence are beginning.   I got a nice brown flannel shirt earlier this week.  It’s very warm and should pay for itself by allowing us to keep the house a bit cooler this winter. Yesterday I wore it while doing chores around town.  It was only this morning that I noticed I had not yet removed all the tags.  I’m surprised I didn’t get stopped in Macy’s by security telling me I had to pay for it before leaving the store.  Only then would they have noticed the price tag said Tractor Supply Co.

It might not be a price tag but all of us continually display tags or signs that supply people with a lot of information about who we are and what are our values.  The way we deport ourselves preaches volumes.  If I am rude and display impatience with others I am broadcasting my lack of character.  If I am super critical of others I am saying more about me than what or whom I am criticizing.  If I am continually negative and create clouds of gloom I make people wonder how I ever got married.  Who would have me?

Being a Christian isn’t necessarily always talking about one’s faith, but more often, it is about our genuine care for others.  Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.”  John 13:35.  T

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 17, 2016

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I got one of those solar panel phone calls today.  The lady I was talking to was very nice.  For a minute or so she answered all my questions just right but then she answered with a comment that didn’t make sense.  It dawned on me.  I wasn’t talking to a real person.  I was talking to a very cleverly programmed computer.  Boy, did I feel stupid.

That is the very reason the first commandment tells us not to worship any other god except Jehovah, our Heavenly Father.  No matter how cunningly they are presented to us, they are ignorant and unable to do anything for us.  Fearful that some might think that about the story of Jesus, Peter wrote, “We have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”     II Peter 1.

One of the truly great things about talking to our Heavenly Father is His intricate and intimate knowledge of us.   He knows our likes and dislikes.  He knows our quirkiness and our peccadilloes.  Despite our limited knowledge of life He never makes us feel stupid.  He is patient and forgiving.  A huge part of our problem is we don’t know what we don’t know.  However, He knows what we don’t know and is understanding when we majorly mess up.  A big problem is when we know what we are doing is wrong and yet we still do it.  We have all done it.  We can’t claim ignorance for all our sins.  But the forgiveness is still there.  It is a matter of repentance.

He is faithful and just to forgive all our sins.  I John 1:9.  He’s the best.

Written by Roger Bothwell  on November 16, 2016

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We are all born philosophers.  Our children are philosophers.  That’s why children delight in playing the Why Game.  It is what philosophers do.  Socrates spent his life playing the Why Game.  The city fathers couldn’t take it anymore and finally sentenced him to death.  Somewhere along the way most of us ceased asking why and changed it for what.  Maybe it happens when we go to school.  Teachers rarely ask children why.  Often we ask for the information we have poured in and hope it can be poured back out.  Thus children with good memories get good grades.  Alas, good grades don’t always mean a child knows why.

Maybe this is what Jesus meant when He said in order for us to enter the Kingdom we have to remain as children.  Maybe He wants us to keep asking why.  Now that we have Google the answers to “what questions” are just a few keystrokes away.  But Google doesn’t do as well when we ask why.

Why is there anything?  Why are we loved?  Why does life seem to need death?   Why can’t we mature and maintain?  Why has God redeemed us?  Why do we have choice?   When I was small and asked my Sabbath School teacher “why questions” he told me I wasn’t to ask such things.  I guess he just didn’t know the answers.  Maybe that’s one reason children stop being philosophers.  We tell them not to ask such things.

Why do radicals believe God is pleased when they blow themselves up and take other lives with them?  Why do they think they are pleasing God when they spread death and terror?   Perhaps it is because they have chosen the easy way.  It is easy to kill.  It is easy to destroy.  It is hard to build.  It is hard to save humanity from disease, hunger and ourselves.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 19, 2015

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The air is filled with the sound of leaf blowers.  It is the sound of now.   There was no such sound when I was a boy.  Then the air was filled with the smell of burning leaves.  It was a fantastic smell.  I realize why we cannot do it anymore but I still wish there was a law that said one day a year we could burn our leaves.  The tang of it filling one’s nostrils was better than any fragrance at Macy’s.   Nostalgia urges me to sneak into the backyard and burn just a tiny pile; just enough to once again savor the past.   Surely I could make it small enough the local authorities would not catch me.  It is then that the still small voice in my head says, “Remember Immanuel Kant.”

His Categorical Imperative is the ultimate moral code.  He wrote, “It is a moral law that is unconditional or absolute for all agents, the validity or claim of which does not depend on any ulterior motive or end.”  For my students I put it in my simple way of speaking.  “It is morally wrong for me to do anything it is not permissible for everyone to do.”

When one ponders it, it becomes but a variation of the Golden Rule.   Thus it is that sin can be anything that lessens the quality of my life and other’s lives.  I cannot throw a paper cup out my car window.  It is not for fear of the $200 fine, but for the fact that our world would look like a pig sty if everyone did so.  Morality can at times be complicated but most often it is simple enough for a child to grasp.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 18, 2015

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My wife was gone this weekend and I had to fend for myself.  I don’t usually eat very well when she isn’t around.  I have a bowl of Cheerios in the morning and the rest of the day is just picking here and there; maybe putting some leftovers in the microwave.  Last evening I found three packs of M&M’s.  Fascinating how much better things taste when one is hungry.  That first pack of M&M’s was fantastic.  So I went for two.  Great eating.  At this point I realized no one was home to chastise me for intemperance and so I ate the third pack.   It took about thirty minutes before I started to feel strange.  Wow.  It was a bad thing to have done.

I heard a sermon once asking what kind of person would I be if I lived where no one knew me.  I think I know the answer.  Unless I developed some self discipline I would be a physical wreck who dies young.  It’s nice living with someone who watches over me.  I never grew up.   Really now, if I was smart I would always live the same way if someone or no one was watching because God only wants the best for me.  It’s about the abundant life Jesus promised in John 10:10. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

Being a Christian and living like God wants us to live is about being SMART.   If we live SMART we can always live like no one is watching, even God and my wife.  Both of them will be very happy.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 16, 2015

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In 1940 the battle for France had been lost and the battle for Britain was to begin.  Speaking to Parliament on June 18, 1940 Winston Churchill uttered these immortal words, “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”  Marina Abramovic, a modern day performance artist, is quoted in Time magazine as saying, “I always believed that people don’t do anything really important from the state of happiness.”

Could it really be?  To be great, to produce something of substance, to pull from our depths the richness of our talents, is it necessary for us to be challenged with hardship, pain or loss?  Do we not rise to our apex unless we suffer?  Was Churchill right about Great Britain or was this merely inspirational rhetoric to steel the British people for what was ahead?  I ask this because I think of what we have been promised.  Will we not in an eternity of peace and prosperity rise to higher and higher levels of achievement and excellence or will we sink to mediocrity because there will be no pressure?  Can we not be happy and still produce feats of great importance to us and to the universe?

Surely God will continue to need us and present us with tasks designed to challenge us and bring out our best.  Perhaps the wonders promised us are not luxuries but instead metaphoric mountains to climb, problems to solve, needs to be met that we and we alone can be the solution.  Whatever it will be, of this we can be sure.  It will make us happy.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 15, 2016

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Today was a honey-do day.  One of the tasks was a fairly easy refastening a shelf to a wall.  But sometimes I find easy tasks ending up being not as easy as I thought they would be.  Have you ever started a simple plumbing job only to end up making five trips to the hardware store and then surrendering and calling a real plumber?   The challenge of today’s shelving task was finding just the right screw.  I needed one that expanded when it was screwed in.  Those aren’t so rare but I needed just the right size.  I needed a Goldie Locks screw – not too big and not too little.

On my workbench I pawed through cans of shiny and rusty nails, screws, bolts, washers, etc.  Surely I fingered through a few thousand such items when suddenly there it was; just what I needed.  As I picked it up it must have been thrilled.   For decades it had been overlooked.  It must have despaired thinking it was quite useless and would never be used.  Everything longs to be used.  Everything needs its moment that justifies its existence. As I screwed it into the wall I remembered a somewhat disheveled man who we asked to help take up the offering one worship morning. He beamed. He stood two inches taller. He could not stop thanking me for asking.  The next week he showed up with his hair combed and his shoes shined.

God has something special for each of us.  Never despair.  Never think you don’t matter.  Never think your life is or was of no importance.  God has a task just for you.  Each day be available and someday whether you know it or not, God will use you for something no one else could have done.  Oh how grand.

Written by Roger Bothwell on November 14, 2016

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Many schools no longer teach cursive.  Children are so keyboard literate it seems the only use for cursive is to sign one’s name.  I always despised penmanship class.  We had to make endless ovals which for me always looked like a tornado on its side as the ovals got progressively smaller as they approached the right hand side of the page.  Paul had Tertius write for him.  However he did write the closing lines in his letters.  “I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, which is the distinguishing mark in all my letters.  This is how I write.”  2 Thessalonians 3:17.

I wonder how much Paul would have left us had he a computer.  It does seem that we are missing one of his letters to Corinth.  Many scholars believe II Corinthians should be III Corinthians.  Had he the tools to send out a thousand emails each evening I’m sure we would have lots of details regarding his adventurous travels spreading the Good News.  I wish we knew more about Tertius.  Was he merely a recorder or did they discuss the wording of passages in Romans?

I am most grateful to be able to use modern technology to tell you how much Jesus loves you.  My sorrow is my lack of grasping the deeper things, the mysteries, of which Paul speaks. His mind was amazing.  Romans 5, 6, 7 and 8 make my mind swirl with an attempt to grasp Paul’s depth.  Even Peter speaks of struggling to understand.  See II Peter 3:16.

Suffice it to say we are thankful to know the basics.  We are sinners.  Jesus’ death enables the Father to lavish us with grace and we are saved.   That’s enough for now.  Probably would be enough forever, but more we shall know.

Written by Roger Bothwell on October 25, 2016

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