Author: Ian Bothwell

In John 14 Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in my name it will be given to you.” If this were so all of us would be riding around in luxury cars, living in luxury homes, eating killer diets and not needing health care insurance.  But wait, if we all were doing so, who would go to work to make the cars, build the houses and raise the food?  Everyone would be a Christian for the wrong reason.  Our characters would be corrupted and everything Jesus taught would be nullified.  Jesus’ name would become “hocus pocus.”  Furthermore, giving a child all they ask for is terrible parenting and God is not a terrible parent.

The key of understanding is the expression “in my name.”   In His name is an expression of trust that when we ask He will respond in the utmost best way for us.   He knows what we really desire is happiness, growth and eternal life.  Each prayer is uniquely answered with these root desires in mind. This week I stopped to look at a row of luxury cars.  They were pretty – inside and out.  However, what was more appalling than the sticker price was the posted estimated gas mileage.  It was horrible and I might add sinful.  For the sake of personal comfort and more than a little vanity they expect us to add to the ruination of our small planet by driving their product and using twice the gasoline we need so we can get from pillar to post in STYLE.

If I asked God for one of those cars and if He gave it to me, together, God and I would be violating what we both really want.  I want a better world and God knows that.  Asking in His name means trusting Him to give me what I REALLY want.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 5, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

My tanks were full as I lifted off from the Redlands airport.  I had more than enough fuel to carry me home to Pacific Union College.  But something strange happened after crossing the Mohave Desert.  I was a comfortable three thousand feet above the Tehachapi Mountains as I sought to slide over the top and drop down into California’s central valley.  However, I wasn’t making any forward progress.  As I looked down, not only were cars passing me, but I continued to be over the same pile of rocks.  My airspeed indicator read 140 mph but when I tuned into the weather report I quickly learned that I was heading into an over 100 mph head wind.  I wasn’t going anywhere.  I was just burning fuel and I needed to stop in Bakersfield for a fill-up if I was going to get home.

I have seen many college students not really going anywhere.  They were just burning up tuition.  It seemed they were in college merely because they didn’t know where else to be.  No matter what we are doing we need to be making progress.  It can be a career.  It can be mental growth.  It can be building better relationships.  It can be developing character.  Whatever it is we should not just burn up life.  The days and years are too precious to let slip by.

Being a Christian is not just about living forever.  It is about growth.  Stagnation just doesn’t hack it.  Stagnation is a waste of brain power.  Stagnation is a waste of life. God’s gift of eternity is for us to become more and more with each passing century.  Note it is not to have more and more but to BE more and more.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 5, 2013

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

I have no idea why I thought of Margaret just now.  I haven’t seen Margaret since fourth grade.  She was taller than the rest of us and sat in the back left hand corner.  Every day Margaret wore the same faded simple cotton dress.  Perhaps that’s why she sat where she did for the room steam radiator was there.  Winters can be cold in Pennsylvania especially when she had no socks, just a bad looking pair of boy’s shoes on ends of her pencil legs.  Today Social Services would intervene but this was sixty years ago.  Her long unkept hair was extremely unattractive.  Some of the kids called her “Cooties.”  I don’t think I ever did.  But neither did I tell the others to stop.  We can be most cruel.

When Christmas came we drew names out of a hat for a present exchange.  I think the teacher brought a present for Margaret to exchange.  We were all high as kites the afternoon before Christmas break.  Most likely it was a sugar high from all the sand tarts.  The room was electric when two little girls started passing out the presents.  Then our eyes grew large as something wonderful started happening in the back left hand corner.  Margaret got one present and then another and then another and then another.  They just kept piling up.  As my fading memory can recall there were thirty children in the room and Margaret received over twenty-five presents.  The teacher took her home so she didn’t have to try to ride the bus.

I also remember that for the rest of the school year no one ever again called her “Cooties.”  Every once in a while something happens to tell us that humans aren’t all bad.  How I would love to know where she is today.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 5, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

Dagwood Bumstead and I have a common interest in life.  We love naps.  Also like his dog Daisy who comes and awakens him, I can be completely unconscious on the couch when I feel hot breath enveloping my space. I have learned not to open an eye, not even to peek.  From six inches away she stares waiting for the slightest flicker of an eyelid.  To flicker is to get a gigantic red tongue swash over my nose and mouth.  Yuk.   This is followed by 100 pounds of nuzzling and cuddling and pushing.  The nap is over.

In 1893 Francis Thompson first published his poem “The Hound of Heaven.”   God is the relentless hound that once on our trail with His gift of grace, continues the pursuit.  From inches away He watches us, waiting for the faintest flicker of an eye or raising of our brows.  Any signal that the time is right will be capitalized upon.  We can’t run away.  Jonah tried.  Psalm 139 reads, “Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

If you have felt the nearness of His pursuit, give up.  I promise you He will not.  He is extremely patient.

By the way if you ever have the opportunity to hold a lab’s ear lightly crunched in your hand, do it.  It is one of the softest things you will ever hold.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 4, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

It was the worst possible day in the history of the universe.  The Creator Himself was being crushed by the work of His hands.  Finally, “Jesus called out with a loud voice, ‘”Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”’ When he had said this, he breathed his last.”  Amid the horror and the celebration of hell, there was a sweet moment.  That final prayer was the prayer Jesus learned from Joseph.  When going to sleep each evening Joseph taught Jesus Psalm 31:5.  Did Jesus remember?  Was He comforted in that last moment by the memory of a strong carpenter cradling Him and saying, “Jesus, repeat after me.  Father . . .”   One could do much worse in life than to die with a small child’s prayer upon one’s lips.  Surely the angels wept as they made the connection.  They remembered.

The Sabbath that followed was silent.  There were no anthems sung.  There were no choirs celebrating the creation of their galaxy.  There were no crowns thrown before the Father in praise.  The universe was dressed in black.  Every intelligent eye was focused on earth.  The sun set and the Sabbath was over.  One could feel the excitement in the air as Gabriel waited for the command.  Sunday was coming.  Dawn moved across Japan then China and then India.  No one wanted to miss what was coming.

“Thy Father calls thee” had to be the most exciting four words ever spoken.  He is the leader of the resurrection parade.  Because of what happened next millions will hear that same command.  Millions will live again.  Millions will never again die.  Millions will spend millennia telling and retelling the story that will never grow old.  It is the greatest story ever told.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 13, 2017

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

Rogerbothwell.org

Don’t you just love it when television commercials, for whatever product, inform us their offer is for a limited time only?   Just how dull do they think we are?   Of course it is for a limited time only.  Everything is for a limited time only.  When we are born “for a limited time only” should be printed on our birth certificates.  Even the rock of Gibraltar is there for a limited time.  One would have to be very unobservant if one looked at a map of the Atlantic Ocean and didn’t notice South America and Africa used to fit together.

Of course I understand they are trying to motivate us to hurry in and open our wallets.  They want us to think their March Madness Sale will never be repeated.  However, it will.  It will become the April Shower Sale which actually might be better because not enough people showed up for the March event.

Preachers do this.  The offer to come to Jesus is available for a limited time only.  They are right.  When we stop breathing the offer goes away.   Now that I have said that I do want to point out that Revelation 22 indicates there will be a time when the offer is no more.  Just as the door of Noah’s ark was ultimately closed Scripture indicates this existence that we now know is for a limited time only.  Some might be tempted to think, “Okay, I can wait.”   True, but why?  Why live a substandard life when Jesus offers the best to begin now.  The benefits of citizenship in God’s Kingdom are not just a future thing.  They begin now.  And best of all they are for an unlimited time.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 3, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

When I was very small my father was a high school principal.  On Saturday nights he brought home a 16 mm Bell and Howell projector and films that had been ordered for his school.  This was before television so I was wowed and very excited.  He hung a bed sheet on the wall and we were living on easy street.  One night we saw Walt Disney’s Fantasia.  One of the segments was The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”  A little Mickey Mouse was totally overwhelmed by a magic process he began and then could not control as brooms continue to bring in buckets of water.

Being so little I did not comprehend what it meant other than to entertain.  Now I understand.  Great power in the hands of the uninformed can bring great disaster.  The huge lottery this past week reminded me that money is power.  Suddenly, someone, most likely with little understanding of what that much money can do, will hold in their hands the power to do great good or do great harm.

When I was a young pastor I earnestly prayed for power to heal.  I would leave hospitals and cry in the parking lot because I could not save some small child’s mother from breast cancer.  What kind of useless servant was I?  Now it is slowly dawning on me as to the havoc that would have wrought.   In Ephesians 3 Paul wrote, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, . . .”  The power is there but in finely measured amounts.  A power surge can destroy our computers.  A divine power surge could destroy souls.

Written by Roger Bothwell on April 2, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

It was quite blustery yesterday as we walked through Boston Common with friends from Sweden.  Stopping to retie my shoe we noticed a lovely pearl and silver earring on the path.  Not being Vincent Van Gogh one earring would not be sufficient for me.  We left it perhaps with the hope the owner would retrace her steps and recover the treasure.  As we walked on I wondered was it a pearl of great price?

“The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”  Matthew 13.   Just about everything I have ever read about this story tells us Jesus was teaching us that eternal life is so valuable we must not hesitate to sacrifice all to be sure it is ours.  I have never been totally comfortable with that.  There is way too much focus on us and our labor.  Therefore, I find another meaning that seems so much more in harmony with the Gospel.  We are the lost ones.  And God, the great lover and pursuer of sinners, sees us as the pearl.  He was the one who made the great sacrifice.  He is the one who will not let us go.  He is the one constantly moving silently among people in search of ones who will respond to His wooing.

I look in the mirror and ask “How can it be?”  Everything I see is withering away.  Where is this value He sees?   Those are questions I need not answer.  All we need to do is be thankful and accept.  Go and look in a mirror and repeat after me.  “I am a pearl of great price.”  Oh what jewels He has!

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 31, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

When I was really little things were right or wrong depending upon the pleasure or pain I experienced from particular behaviors.   However, it did not take long before I would begin negotiating with my parents.  If I was a good boy, what would I get?  Maybe I could get three stories before going to bed. When I was a teen things were right or wrong depending upon the rules of the school.  No matter how inane the rules, it was wrong to disobey.  They did not have to make sense. It was very much like a line from Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”  “Theirs is not to reason why.  Theirs is but to do and die.”  That works in the military but not in civilian life.

Unfortunately some Christians obey merely because they want to go to heaven.  They want the treat.  Or worse they don’t want to be punished.  Many Christians operate on the next level of morality.  A common bumper sticker reads, “God said it and that’s good enough for me.”  That’s the Tennyson level.  But what about the brain God gave us?  He did say, “Come and let us reason together.”  Moses argued with God.

A higher level of morality is for us to understand the reasons for rules and laws.  Often we discover the rules no long fit our present culture and our human laws sometimes need to be amended.  God’s laws do not change because God’s laws are based on reasons and principles which do not change.   Ultimately we understand that we obey because it is the right thing to do.  Or we disobey because it is the right thing to do.  Enter onto the stage Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Jesus.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 27, 2013

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

My wife has a much better sense of smell than I do.  When we go to the market she literally sniffs her way through the fruits and vegetables.  Her nose scans the melons and boxes of tangerines.  She makes sure we get good produce.  Yet, at home I can open the pantry and pick up the faintest sweet scent of an onion going bad and she does not detect it.   I shouldn’t be puzzled regarding this because I know that each person has unique qualities.   The world would be a very uninteresting place if each of us had the same talents and gifts.  Can you imagine how dull conversations would be?

A football team would be a pretty sorry organization if everyone was a quarterback.  It needs those guys who look like refrigerators just as much as it needs runners who can make a hundred yards seem like a stroll in the park.  Churches need an endless array of gifts from hospitality to scholars, pastors and evangelists.  Churches even need administrators because roofs will leak and furnaces will get old.  That is where we come in.  Each of us has something to contribute.  No one is giftless.  I have a friend who cannot see.  You should read some of the wonderful poetry that flows from her pen.  She is really good.

One thing that breaks our hearts is when we see gifted youth wasting for whatever reason.  Sometimes it is because they have yet to recognize their value. That’s where older people need to step in.  Remember Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  Too often we only apply this verse to moral issues.  It has a much vaster application.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 29, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org