Roger Bothwell

On November 8, 1972, we sat in a plane with our pockets full of cash waiting to leave Entebbe, Uganda.  The cash wasn’t ours.  President Idi Amin had exiled all 580,000 Asians without Ugandan citizenship.  Each family could leave with only $140.  Thousands buried huge amounts of cash all over the country thinking to return someday to retrieve it.  After they were gone Amin changed the currency thus rendering those caches to be filled with worthless paper.  Lifetimes of hard work and saving were gone with the stroke of a pen. 
 
The cash in our pockets was for a family immigrating to Canada.  We got it into their Canadian bank account while it still had value.  Never before did Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount mean so much to me.  “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:  but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  Matthew 6
 
As fleeting as human wealth can be we can still take heart in something else from the Sermon on the Mount.  “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”  Matthew 6.  Our heavenly Father knows us and will provide.  For this we can celebrate this Thanksgiving week.  To be part of the family of God is the best thing ever!

Our backyard camera recorded two large raccoons skillfully taking down our suet feeder and dragging it off into the woods.  This afternoon there was a bark at the door and there was our wonder dog with the suet feeder at her feet.  What a good dog!  “Well done thou good and faithful servant.”
 
If God is half as pleased with me as I am with my retriever I am in good shape.  Ephesians 1 tells us God created us for His pleasure.  I love that verse.  He didn’t have to make us. He wanted to.  He made us in His image and gave us the tools to grow.  Our potential was unlimited until sin barged in and limited our years and thus limited our growth.  How exciting eternal life is that we will have unlimited growth.  We will make the Einsteins and DaVincis of the world look ignorant and ungifted when compared with our developing skills.  And it will make God happy.  Just as we burst with pride when our children and grandchildren excel, God rejoices in our feats. 
 
In Job 1 God brags about Job only to have Satan challenge that pride.  And so the story unfolded and Job made God proud.  I was always happy when I made my father proud of me.  He used to brag about me to his friends.  God was bragging about Job.  We are here for His good pleasure.  Our pleasure is His pleasure.   Do I ever disappoint God by my willfulness?  Of course I do.  Is He unhappy?  I’m sure He is.  Does He forgive me?  By the time my request for forgiveness is uttered it is done.  It makes Him happy.
 
Now that I have told you about the wonders of my dog, let me tell you about my grandchildren.

A strong November wind has finally stripped our trees.  My woods finally look like Robert Frost’s poem My November Guest.  “My Sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; . . . She’s glad the birds are gone away, she’s glad her simple worsted gray is silver now with clinging mist. . . Not yesterday I learned to know the love of bare November days before the coming of the snow, . . .” 
 
I am thankful our earth is tilted on its axis.  Should it not be we would have no seasons.  Depending where one lived on earth would determine a sameness to everyday.  There would be 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night at the equator.  There would be eternal evening on the poles.  But as it is I rejoice in the coming of the snow and after a white feast I thrill at the bursting of spring with all its daffodils and crocuses. 
 
It is Thanksgiving week and time to revel in the richness of life, which has little or nothing to do with one’s bank account.  It is about life.  It is about love and friends.  It is about the thrill of learning something new each day.  Even though we have our aches, pains, and worse for some – it is about the hope that Jesus has promised us – an eternity of life without those aches and pains, without the separation from loved ones.
 
And so I look out my window and pull my sweater just a bit more snug. I hope somewhere in heaven there will be snow – lots of snow.  Somewhere there will be gray worsted days.
         __________

The signs of senescence are beginning.  (Most of my students are amused that just now I am noticing.  They think anyone over 50 needs senior care.)  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.  Maybe if I had worn it to class last night my students would have thought me super cool and think I was a rapper.  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.  This isn’t about what’s in your wallet.  It’s about what tag are you wearing.

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.

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.

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.

Last evening in class some of my students taught me a new word.  I had no idea this word existed.  It is “subitize.”   It is pronounced “sue baa tize.”  I felt a bit dull because it wasn’t the high school math teachers who taught me this word.  It was the kindergarten teachers.  Subitize means to perceive at a glance the number of items presented.  Unless you are Rain Man the limit for most of us is seven.
 
In Matthew 10 Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”  Our Heavenly Father is the Master Subitizer. 
 
On a very clear night with little light pollution the average person can see about 2000 stars.  We cannot subitize them.  They were counted by astronomers with sky maps.  That is such a small sampling of what is really out there.  “He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name.”  Psalm 147:4.  He doesn’t call them Sirius and Arcturus.  Those are the names we have given them.   He calls them by the names He has given.  Each is special.  I have often wondered what is His name for our sun.

Our personal names are those our parents gave us.  I wonder what He calls us.  We shall know someday.  “I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.”  Revelation 2.  One thing we know for sure. He knows you and me.  He knows all about us because He is the Master Subitizer.

We have a small music box containing three separate cylinders, thus it plays three different tunes.  I like it best when all three songs are playing at the same time.  I know that sounds strange but each time the music is a different delicate cacophonic dissonance of never before heard music.  Each time is an original composition created by different starting times. If you concentrate you can pick out each separate tune as you filter out the other two.  I know the definitions of cacophony and dissonance imply unpleasant jarring sounds.  But the softness of the music box produces something eerily beautiful.
 
There are millions of prayers simultaneously ascending to God’s ears.  Each moment He hears the beautiful sounds of His children intermingled with need, worship and love.  As a teacher I sometimes have to ask my students to politely wait their turn for I am not capable of grasping their concurrently spoken ideas.  Our Father has no such limitation.  You can speak.  I can speak.  We do not need to wait for our turn.   Neither the softness of our thanksgiving nor the pained anguish of our needs interfere with His caring cognition.
 
The wonder of our Heavenly Father will challenge our intellects forever as we seek to grasp the immensity of His love for us.  Paul wrote, “Open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.”  Ephesians 3.
 
Thusly as we all speak to Him it is music to His heart. 

History provides us with moments of great importance.  Decisions, decisions, decisions weigh heavily on our hearts.  Sometimes proximity blurs the importance for us and we forget other much more important moments.  Not a Tuesday night but a Thursday night 2000 years ago a decision was made not for the continuity of the Roman government but for the universe.  God had sent His Son, His only Son, to earth and the culmination of that was would He or would He not while being human suffer one of the most horrific of deaths at the hands of those He had created.
 
There was silence in heaven as He fell to the earth in Gethsemane begging His Father for another way to save mankind.  There was not another way.  Satan pressed in smothering Him with the prospect of eternal loss, not only for Himself but for everyone.  Rising from the ground He made the decision.  But even yet the physical horror was yet to come.  We can now count the beatings, the humiliations, the number of thorns in His brow, the betrayal of Peter, the wooden cross on his back almost stripped of all skin by the lashes with barbs embedded in the strips of leather, the nails in His hands and the thirst-the incredible thirst.
 
Satan was sure he could break Him.  No one would so endure when with the flick of an eye bring it instantly to an end.  All heaven and all hell waited to see what the end would be.  Any other decisive moment in time pales in comparison to this.
 
On Sunday morning the angels sang because WE won.  We won not just four years.  We won eternity for everyone and anyone who will decide to accept the gift.