Month: June 2020

In the latter part of 2009 a mother of four was admitted to a hospital in Phoenix.   She was in the first trimester of a pregnancy and the right side of her heart had ceased to function.  After careful and prayerful consideration Sister Margaret McBride, the hospital administrator, granted permission for the baby to be aborted.  It was the only way to save the mother who had four children at home who needed her.  Sister McBride is a highly respected member of the Sisters of Mercy and had an unblemished record but she had broken church law.  The Bishop of the Phoenix diocese forthwith excommunicated her taking away her rights to communion and any other sacrament.

I mention this because it is a classic example of following the letter of the law and forgetting the spirit of the law.   In Mark 2 Jesus commends David for feeding his men the shewbread from the temple because his men were in need of food.  It was a clear violation of temple law.  Only the priests were to eat the shewbread. David’s men with all the notches on their spear shafts could hardly be considered priests.  Over and over Jesus sought to have us understand that people are more important than laws.  Laws are made to protect people and when they do the opposite principles come into operation. In Galatians Paul says the entire law is summed up in how we treat others.

Solomon once said there is a time to kill.  Sister McBride’s dilemma was which one was to die, the mother or the developing baby.   If we think this was an easy decision it is only because we have never had to do so.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 10, 2010

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

Rogerbothwell.org

We are in the midst of a presidential campaign and silliness will abound in the coming months prior to November.  Each side will listen ever so carefully to the other side waiting for a phrase or sentence to yank out of context.   It will be turned into a sound bite and pushed in our face as the central doctrine of their opponent.  I am sure each of us could easily be made to look worse than we are by our enemies using this worn out tactic.

Unfortunately it doesn’t happen just to politicians but also to God.  People search the Bible, not to find truth, but to find a phrase or a text to yank out of context so they might build a case against God and seek to confuse us.

We can never over stress the importance of context.   A text out of context rarely states reality or the intent of the author/speaker.  Truth, as it is,is often difficult to come by, let alone have others deliberately distort. The number one rule for Bible study is to step back and look at the whole.  What is the overall message?  If we find something that appears to be in opposition to that overall message we must be very careful before we seek to build a new truth.

The overall message of Scripture is quite simple.  There is an enemy seeking to destroy us.  We have a Savior.  God is love.  We can live forever if we so chose.  We can with divine help grow and become so much more than we are today.  It really is that simple.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 8, 2008

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

Rogerbothwell.org

I was sitting in a beautiful church.  I could not imagine what it cost. The pipe organ alone cost more than most church buildings.  The stained glass windows were awesome.  Each window told a Bible story.  And yet as I left I was uninspired.  The sparse congregation barely sang the hymns and the sermon was mediocre at best.  While walking to my car I remembered a church on the slopes of Mount Kenya where we attended a  campmeeting.  The roof was rusted, corrugated metal and the sides were vertical wooden slates filled with knot holes.  There was no pulpit and the people sat on planks on blocks.  When it rained, and it did every day, I had to stop preaching because the sound on the roof was mesmerizingly deafening.  The best part was the music.  The music leader would hold up an empty orange Fanta bottle by the lip on the top of the bottle and beat out rhythms by striking it with the side of a coin.  Oh how the people would sing.  It was a foretaste of heaven.

Obviously great worship experiences don’t have to occur in great cathedrals. Emily Dickenson once wrote,

“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church — I keep it, staying at Home — With a Bobolink for a Chorister — And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –I just wear my Wings —

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton — sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last — I’m going, all along.”

How absolutely grand!!

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 8, 2010

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

Life is full of surprises.  We don’t always get what we expected.  A couple of months ago we went to the local shelter and brought home a pretty black lab puppy or so we thought.  As she has matured we noticed her behavior is not that of a lab.  She is a border collie in black lab clothes.  I had a border collie when I was a boy and while I loved her dearly I had vowed not to get another one.  They have this very inbred behavior of wanting to herd everything.  She wants to round up people and keep them in a group.  This is accomplished by gentle nips on the back of legs.  Fortunately we don’t have small children in the house.  Well, it’s too late now.  We have fallen in love and will live with this very sweet dog that wants all her people in one place where she can see us. Her latest adventure happened just an hour or so ago.  She met our neighborhood fox.  Ouch!  We are very glad she is up to date on her rabies shot.  It was a very scary encounter for both of them and her not so bad wounds will quickly heal.  She seems very happy to be inside right now.

I have seen both brides and grooms surprised after a few months of marriage. They didn’t quite get what they were expecting.  Sometimes it is much betterthan what they wanted and of course the opposite also happens.   There are very few sure things in life.  Now comes the good part.  There is one sure thing.  God loves you dearly.  Jesus died to save you.  Salvation is a gift.

Perhaps that’s the greatest surprise of all.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 7, 2010

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

I watched a lady this afternoon walking her toddler.  He was on a leash, just like a dog.  At first I mentally objected but the longer I thought about it, it seemed like a really good idea.  He might as well get used to it because he will be on a leash all of his life.  While we think we are big people making decisions for ourselves, reality is most of our decisions are made for us.  When we are children our parents tell us what to do.  When we are teens our peers collectively tell us how to dress and what music to like.  Our teachers tell us what to read and our churches tell us how to behave.  As adults society tells us how fast we can drive and politicians tell us what to think.  We are acculturated and the New York Times tells us what books to read.  People in Russia get up in the morning and watch “The Today Show.”  Teens in Iraq, Iran and Panama all watch the same programs made in the USA and beamed to them by satellites.  Everyone wants a pair of jeans.  The world is becoming homogenized. We sometimes wonder why the ayatollahs hate us. They recognize they are losing their youth to western culture.  Our young people aren’t watching television programs from Baghdad.

I sincerely believe that God has a dream for us to ultimately be off the leash.  He created us in His image with incredible minds to think, create and discover.  Eternal life is about freedom to think and do.  Please read Galatians 5.  The only restriction in God’s Kingdom is to do no harm.  There is but one law and it is golden.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 6, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

We all know “utopia” is an imaginary place where everything is perfect.  “Dystopia” is just the opposite.  It is an imaginary place where everything is dysfunctional like Lucifer’s kingdom. I was tempted to say that this world is dystopia.  If I focus on the world and local news things don’t look very good.  If I listen to the politicians trying to get our votes, things seem horrible. And of course each one is the solution if we believe what they say. But there is another side to our world. There are flowers, warblers, vistas and a whole array of truly beautiful things to capture our attention. This is my Father’s world.

And there is the dilemma.  Is this my Father’s world or is this Dystopia?  It seems that it can be either depending upon our focus.  This is a world filled with suicide bombers and missile-laden drones firing out of the sky like lightning.  The world is filled with good people who daily sacrifice for the benefit of others.  The world is filled with sadistic psychotics. It would be easy to go on listing examples of the dichotomy in which we live.  That would be useless because we know both are here.  Whatever we look for we will find.  There is a plethora of either.

Jesus knew very much of what He spoke when He said, “Seek and you will find.”  The quality of our lives is the fruit of our choices.  If one wishes to live in a dystopia, it’s here.  If one wishes to live in our Father’s world. It too is here.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 5, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

Amos is called a minor prophet.  He is called that because his book is small.   However, his message is huge and just as appropriate today as it was hundreds of years before Jesus was born.  The heart of his message comes in chapter five.   Speaking for God he wrote, “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.  But let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Let us not deceive ourselves because of tradition, or habits of behavior, to think that our present way of conducting business is any less offensive to God than it was in Amos’ day.  Society, despite civil rights legislation which should shame Christianity to think we needed secular powers to force us to do the right thing, is still far from perfect.  Our churches still practice discrimination in more than one form.  We should be the leaders and not the tail when it comes to matters of justice and righteousness.

I refrain from mentioning a specific because that would narrow the message to a particular issue.  The call is broader than one issue.  It is about the ability and willingness of God’s people to examine whatever civic or religious group we support and be sure we are not benignly and without thought supporting policies or doctrines that deny a group or a person the right to full participation.  Let justice run down like water and righteousness like a mighty river.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 4, 2010

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 945474

Rogerbothwell.org

 

I am sitting here looking at a photo of a spokesperson for a hair-care company giving one million dollars worth of PRODUCT to a mission for the homeless in LA.  I am trying not to be cynical about the value of this gift as I think of LA’s homeless being the best groomed people in town.  Perhaps the mission can sell it on Ebay.  Most likely if I knew more details it wouldn’t seem so ludicrous, which is the case with most of the stories we hear.  Often we make snap judgments with very little solid information.  My email fills each day with critical stories about politicians and the like and you know they are prepared by special interest groups preying on the gullible. Facts are often deliberately distorted and half-truths are told to play on our insecurities and fears.

One of the classes I teach each summer is called Research Methods and one of the very first lessons is to ask who paid for the research.  One can find research that will support almost any position.  It all depends who put the numbers together and what is their bias.  Most of us with grey hair can remember when the tobacco industry filled evening television with actors pretending to be doctors as they told us how soothing, relaxing and stress-reducing cigarettes were.  They had all kind of research data to back up their health claims.  One thing we do know is often people do not want the truth.  What they really want is a research study to support what they already believe.

It is the same way with Bible study.  Often instead of looking for truth we instead look for a text to support what we already believe.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 2, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

I sometimes wish life was as easy to sort out as it is in the old-time westerns when the good guys wore white hats.  I very much doubt there is much of a market for white hats.  Good historians, those dedicated to seeing through our self-created myths, seek to reveal as much actuality as possible.  The more we study the more we come to realize our heroes of the past were just people with good publicists. One of my heroes, Thomas Jefferson, was a spendthrift and a slave holder.  Yet I realize how wrong it is to judge a historical character by today’s ethics.  Unless we know all the details we would be wise to withhold judgment.  Every time and every culture cast their own shade of gray upon human behavior.

It is best to keep our heroes at arms length and not seek too much detail. Many years ago we had a family to our home for Sabbath dinner.  Upon leaving the husband reported to others that I, the pastor, was not the man they thought I was.  I don’t think that was to be understood that I was better than he had thought.  His big mistake was coming to dinner.  Some might say, “You should have been better.”   Sorry about that, but, I think I lost my white hat after about one week in the ministry.

Rarely am I surprised or crushed when I hear something negative about a sterling person.  My concept of him is not lowered because I know all of us are very flawed.  But I might think less of the person who bore the bad tidings.  There has only been one among us worthy of the white hat.  See Hebrew 4:15 for the answer.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 2, 2010

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

When I was a very little boy, before we moved to the country, we lived in a city row house with just enough room between the house beside us to accommodate a walkway and a small patch of ground.   The patch had no grass. It was perfect for playing marbles.  I don’t really remember the rules of the game but there were three small holes I had dug and it had something to do with using a shooter to knock other marbles into the holes.  The very best part of my day was when my father would come home from school. He would get down on his hands and knees and play marbles with me.  I would smooth the dirt, rub the marbles clean on my pants, sit on the steps of the porch and wait for his car, our car, an old black prewar something.  I don’t know what it was.

How strange it is that so many decades later I am still waiting for my Father.  I have grown up in a church that is waiting.  The entire concept of waiting is embedded in its name. I have watched my friends and family engaged in this waiting process.  We speak of it almost weekly.  It is based upon the promises of Jesus.  I wonder if in some undesigned way the waiting has kept us from truly appreciating the now.   We almost want the world to get worse and worse so Jesus will return and take us to our Father. Catastrophes are almost welcomed.

If I read carefully what Jesus said, I wonder if we have missed the promises that once we make Him the Lord of our lives, the blessings and benefits of citizenship in the Kingdom of the Father are not merely the future but are the now.   See John 5.

Written by Roger Bothwell on June 1, 2010

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

Rogerbothwell.org