Author: rogerbothwell_kiywit

Recently the president of the Seattle NAACP was scandalized because it was revealed she wasn’t black.  She had been pretending.  I honestly do not know why this was so awful.  Why can’t someone pretend to be what they want to be?  I have been pretending to be something I am not for most of my life.  I was a pastor and pretended to be a good man.  For years I have been a college professor and have been pretending to be knowledgeable about certain areas of knowledge.  The truth is my gift is being able to project confidence because I know a little about a lot of things but I am not an authority on anything.
   
When I was in college a professor, who I really admired, said to me after I made a presentation, “That was the most interesting nothing I have ever listened to.”  Instead of being hurt, I thanked him because I knew he was telling the truth.
 
All this brings me to my point.  As human beings, if we want to face the truth about ourselves, we are basically selfish.  There are a few unselfish people in our midst, a few.  But most of us who claim to be Christians are pretending. To be a Christian is to be Christ-like.  That is an insurmountable goal.  But I am committed to pretending because I believe if we pretend to be something long enough we actually become what we desire to be.  Our challenge is to be a better and better Christian pretender.  The wonderful thing about this quest is God promises to help us become.  Enoch was taken to heaven because he became so much like God.  That did not happen overnight. See Genesis 5.

We’ve a bumper crop of acorns this year.  I can’t recall an autumn with more.  As my dog and I were walking this afternoon I never gave it a thought as we traversed the terrain under a wonderful shady oak.  And then it happened.  Right on top of my not-protected-by-hair head – kerplunk!   I was acorned.  It must be the reason we call October Fall.

Acorns are the promise of another generation of oaks.  They are heralds of hope as well as a present banquet for our squirrels.  One of my favorite authors wrote about acorns.  She said, “As surely as the oak is in the acorn so surely is the gift of God in the promise.”  When we hold acorns in our hands we hold giant oak trees.  When we read “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” we can start planning on what furniture we want where.  John 14.
 
Just in case I was beginning to forget I got hit on the head this afternoon by a promise.  I can start planning my heavenly library.  It’s real.  It’s mine.  My name is engraved on the bottom right hand corner of all the book covers.  They are mine.  I have the bump on the top of my head to prove it.
 
What’s your acorn?  What’s your promise?  Could it be John 3:16, I Thessalonians 4 or I Corinthians 15?   Actually the Bible contains a bumper crop of promises.

I’m sitting here looking at a bonsai elm tree.  I realize bonsaiing is an ancient art that produces some beautiful plants, but I could not help myself from feeling sorry for this tiny elm tree.  It was supposed to be 50 feet tall and make shade for weary travelers.  But here it was stunted and gnarled.  It reminded me of bonsaied Christians who never grew into the giants God planned for them.
 
The world is full of bonsaied Christians who have never experienced the joy of salvation because they are so focused on self-perfection at the expense of understanding while they are growing they are covered by Christ’s perfection. They have never been taught or worse have been taught the opposite.  They don’t know that salvation is a gift that begins the moment they give their hearts to Jesus.  The perfection that is necessary for salvation is and always will belong to Jesus.  They never understand God is a good parent.  Good parents don’t expect their 18 month old child to drive a car.  God knows what we can and cannot do and He has no expectations of us to be something far beyond our developmental stage.  I am an old man who has been a friend of Jesus for seven decades.  His expectations for me are so much more than for a twenty year old.  But sometimes when I morally act like a twenty year old He is disappointed with me but certainly doesn’t throw me out of His family.
 
Certain churches and specific pastors unknowingly bonsai their members.   Fortunately we are not saved by knowledge and so millions of bonsaied Christians will someday understand. They will be freed to grow into everything God wants for them.

My neighbors across the street have a very nice granite pillar for their mailbox and sure enough there is moss growing only on the north side of the pillar.  It makes one want to confirm the old survival rule about moss growing only on the north side of trees.  Of course that is only in the northern hemisphere in the southern hemisphere moss grows on the south side of trees.  Well, maybe that is true in both hemispheres.  Moss will grow on any side of a tree depending upon where sunlight strikes it.  Sunlight retards the growth of moss and all things being equal the farther away you are from the equator the truer is the old axiom.
 
One of the things I try to teach my students is to be very careful with the words all and every. Depending upon conditions and circumstances there usually are exceptions to almost everything.  Usually moss only grows on the north side of trees.  Usually Christians are nice people.  Actually that should always be true.  No matter whatever someone calls themselves if they are not a nice person they really are not a Christian.  They are just pretending to be.  And that could be pretending even to oneself.
 
In Romans 14:17, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, . .”  Isn’t it bizarre that people often get that concept reversed?  This isn’t saying we should not be firm, especially with our children, but it does rule out being nasty.  So here is an axiom that is just the reverse of trees.  Righteousness only grows on the sunny side of a Christian.  That is with Jesus being the light shining on that person.

Mark Twain said, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”  If you haven’t seen it yet go to You Tube and search for bulldog vs. bears.  There you will see Jules, a twenty pound bulldog, chase two large bears out of its California yard.
 
When I was a little guy someone really frightened me with I Peter 5:8 which says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  I thought it would be hopeless to do battle with him.  I knew he was a fallen angel but now he was described as a roaring lion.  What could I do when he showed up?
 
We need to be careful when we talk to little people.  It was years before I discovered Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” and verse 37, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, . . . will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
 
While it would be foolish to be cocky in this battle for our souls, “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!”  (I Corinthians 10:12)  it is not necessary to be afraid.  “Don’t be afraid!” Elisha told him. “For there are more on our side than on theirs!”  2 Kings 6:16 
 
So let God be our bulldog.  Satan is no match for us when God is on our side.

Skid marks were all that was left.  A tow truck had taken away the car and a crew had cleaned up all the shards of broken glass.  As time goes by rain and snow and traffic will wear away the black stains.   Not all skid marks are the remnants of an accident.  Sometimes they are just the opposite.  Skid marks on the end of a runway mean many flights had safe landings.
 
Life leaves skid marks on people.  We are marked by life’s tragic events.  Accidents, death, disappointments and failed goals mark us and like the disappearing skid marks on the highway time has a way of helping our emotional past to slowly fade.  But it does take time even for the bold who act like they are recovered.  It is one of the reasons we advise people who have lost a dearly loved spouse not to make any major decisions for at least a year.  No matter how seasoned, we are not immune.
 
Jesus forgives sins in an instant.  It often takes much longer for us to forgive ourselves.  We rue our mistakes and harbor wrongs that we have done.  Jesus forgives but the skid marks remain and it takes time.  Forgiveness is a two way event.  As we forgive others so must we forgive ourselves seventy times seven.  We wonder how we could have been so stupid.  Well, we are.  It’s part of being a human, a major part.  But just as surely as the black stains disappear on the highway so they will fade for us.  Living the abundant life promised to us by Jesus is acknowledging our humanity and forgiving ourselves for being so.  Hopefully, some of your skid marks are and will be the remnants of safe landings.

Physicists tell us something called Dark Matter keeps the stars from spinning off into space.  Dark Matter is five times more abundant in the universe than the normal matter that composes you, me, your house and your car.  What is fascinating is they, we, don’t know what it is.  We can’t even see it.  Defining it and seeing it will be the next big discovery. 
 
In the meantime, while super smart people are looking for it, I would like to tell them where to find masses of it.  It’s inside human heads and is responsible for people thinking they are serving God by blowing themselves and other into tiny bits.  Dark Matter is in the heads of those who think slicing off human heads, the most wonderful thing God made, brings glory to God.  Humans are made in God’s image and we cannot imagine Dark Matter in Adam’s head; although He did eat the fruit.  Somehow that stupid decision must have had a lot to do with who was handing the fruit to him.  She had to have been gorgeous and men make terrible decisions in the presence of gorgeous women.
 
Surely we exhibit the Dark Matter in our heads when we mistreat and abuse God’s creation.  When we are cruel and thoughtless, when we curse another person, when we mistreat a child, when we steal from someone or worse deliberately kill them, we are defiling something made in His image.  Jesus said if we do this even to the least of them we have done it unto Him, God.  It is no wonder Jesus called Himself, the Light of the World.  He and He alone is the solution to the Dark Matter problem that exists in us.

I’ve heard of it happening but it never happened to me until today.  My wife and I decided we would each like a Frosty from Wendy’s.  We ordered at the menu board and when we pulled up to pay the girl said, “You don’t owe anything.  The man in the car in front of you paid for you.”  Really!?  I looked ahead to see him pull out onto the highway and he was gone.  All I could see was he was black and had a fireman’s license plate.  I will never get a chance to thank him.  But I want to thank him.  One of life’s lessons is we don’t always get what we want.  Every time I see a black fireman I will wonder if he was the one.
 
But we don’t always get what we want.  Life serves us up good and bad things and we have to live by adapting to what is.  It is a good life lesson to learn.  If we don’t we will live frustrated and that really destroys the quality of life.  Paul wanted a particular thorn to be removed from his life.  We think it might have been a vision problem.  He wrote, “Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’”
 
If there is something in your life that you have repeatedly prayed about with no seeming answer, please remember God’s grace is sufficient for you.  Live with it, cope, manage, adapt and become stronger by doing so.  Be more of a person than before.
 
I think I will say thank you by doing the same thing for another person the next time I go to Wendy’s. 

For the past five years one of the most popular television programs has been “The Walking Dead,” a series about a zombie apocalypse.  We, human beings, are strange creatures fascinated with the gross and the bizarre.  Is it part of our natural curiosity or is it the fruit of our degenerate natures?  Perhaps it is a combination of both.
 
I thought about proposing the premise that the world is already full of “The Walking Dead.”  I was about to opine that anyone who has not accepted Jesus and the gift of eternal life is part of that lost group.  I was wishing them a really good life here since this is all they are going to get.  However, here comes the however, Jesus warned me against judging.  I am not the one positioned at the gate of heaven with the right to admit or refuse.  I do not know what goes on in people’s thoughts.
 
Could it be that God loves people so much that He decides not only who has accepted the gift but He knows who would have accepted the gift had it not been for the fact that they met us and we turned them off?  Romans 1:20 reads, “For 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.”  Could it be that millions will be saved without ever hearing of Jesus because they did respond to the wonder of His power?
 
The Bible is very clear that there are among us “The Walking Dead.”   But it definitely is not our call as to who’s who.  God is more gracious and more generous and more merciful and more knowledgeable than any of us. 

It was April, 1945 and I sat on a throw rug on our wooden floor listening to a radio that was as tall as I was.  It had beautiful decorative wood carvings over the cloth covering the speaker and the dial was fun to play with because of the wooing and wowing noises that occurred on either side of a clear station.  But this day I was not playing.  I was listening to the voice of Arthur Godfrey and he was crying as he was trying to describe the funeral procession for Franklin D. Roosevelt.  It was my first experience with death.  That night when my father came home from school we talked about death.   This was different from what I had learned in Sabbath School.  I had seen pictures of Jesus on the cross but He lived again on Sunday.  Why, I asked, wouldn’t President Roosevelt be alive again next week?  Maybe he could be like Lazarus and Jesus would call him forth.
 
My theology hasn’t changed much since I was almost three.  I still believe and I look forward to a great day when Jesus will indeed call forth His children.  Paul wrote, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”  I Thessalonians 4:16.
  
There was no doubt and there is no doubt now.  Perhaps the only difference is now I know where the promise can be found.  This is what being a Christian is all about.  Death will be destroyed.  No longer will we fear its separating pain.  This is not complicated.  Even a very little guy can get it.