Author: Ian Bothwell

About a month ago I replaced a wall switch.  Last night a circuit breaker kicked off and would not reset.  We hired “Sherlock Holmes Electrical Services.”  Well, not really by that name.  But the solution did require an hour of sleuthing on the part of the old guy who came to help.  It is so nice to have experts around.  The fault was my wiring job a month ago.  It just did not reveal itself until we flipped another switch on the opposite side of the room.  As the electrician pulled out of sight I realized that so often in life we think we have fixed something or gotten away with something only to have it pop back up at a later time.  It is merely a matter of circumstances.

I remembered a childhood story about a little guy who, instead of putting his father’s seeds in the garden row, put them all in one hole at the end of the row.   He got away with it, that is, until the seeds sprouted.

How much easier life is when we do things right the first time.  Paul understood.  That’s why he wrote in Galatians 6, “Make no mistake about this: You can never make a fool out of God. Whatever you plant is what you’ll harvest.”   Sometimes we think this means it will become public.  Not so.  There are many secrets that go to the grave.  The issue is not public revelation.  The issue is character growth, which is far more serious.   Character is all we really have in life.   Material goods and reputation can be taken.  It is character that counts.  It’s permanent.  It’s the person we have to live with when everyone else has gone away.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 10, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

Yesterday, while I was in a middle school, I walked past a table filled with mittens and gloves.  I mean filled.  There must have been a hundred pairs and then another hundred singles.  We are having fifty degree days now in New England so I am thinking most of those gloves will not be missed until next fall.  By then the owner’s hands will have gotten bigger so new ones will be the order of the day.

When I was little and had lost several pairs of mittens my mother finally put a string on them that ran through the sleeves of my coat.  I stopped losing them.  It was a bit dorky but it worked. Not every thing that is practical can be cool.   Functionality trumps beauty over and over.

What is wonderful is when you have a combination of both.  It’s great to get a beautiful wife who can also cook a great meal and also bring home a paycheck.  I know.  I know. That was a crude thing to say.  How about this for an illustration?   A beautiful car can also get thirty miles to the gallon and get you safely to your destination.  That most likely works better as an illustration.

Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder I believe God thinks each of us is beautiful. How grand it would be if we would allow ourselves to be functional for Him.  In Ephesians 2 we are told God has a work for us to do. If we cooperate with Him we are beautiful and functional.

There were some beautiful gloves on that table at the middle school.  Alas, they were not being very functional.   They were lost.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 12, 2010

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

 

While dumping a can of coins into a coin machine at my bank I struck up a conversation with a policeman.  Just then the coin machine broke.  Laughingly he said, “Hang on for a moment I’ll tase it for you.”  This prompted me to ask him if he had ever tased anyone.  “Yeah,” he said, “me.”   He went on to tell me about tussling with someone and while trying to taser the bad guy, the policeman ended up tasering himself.  Then because the taser immobilized his muscles he couldn’t move it off of himself.  Ouch!  So much for being our own worst enemy.

So often in life we do it to ourselves.  We overeat.  We don’t exercise.  We speed.  We tell tales about others.  We don’t get enough sleep.  The list can go on and on.  In the course of a life most of the damage we have o\inccurred has been self-induced.  True, on occasion we are genuine victims, but those events are not as common as we would like people to think.  It is so much easier to find someone else or something else to blame than to be brutally honest with ourselves.   Being a teacher I hear endless excuses for why work is not on time.  No one uses “the dog ate it anymore.”   Now it’s the computer’s fault.  If computers were as culpable as we tell it none of us would dare use one.

If we really want God’s grace, if we really want forgiveness, if we really want real inner growth, we have to own-up.  That doesn’t mean running around telling everyone how bad you are.  What it means is quietly telling God how bad you are.  The two of you can work it out.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 11, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

 

Jesus was with His disciples for the last time prior to the cross.  They had left the upper room, left the east gate of Jerusalem, crossed the Kidron and were nearing the garden when He saw a vine growing along a stone wall.   Gathering His men near Him in the light of the Passover moon He lifted the vine and said, “I am the vine.  My Father is the Farmer and He will prune the branches that do not bear grapes.”

My closest neighbor in Uganda grew coffee for his livelihood.  One evening when I came home from classes I saw him cutting down his trees.  Running to him I asked what was wrong.  “Nothing,” he said.  “I’m pruning.”   “No Bwana,” I said.  “You are destroying them.”   He just laughed at me and told me to be patient.   Months later I watched him put props under his newly grown branches to hold up the heavy load of coffee berries.   I never saw such a crop.  He knew.

Sometimes God needs to prune us.  It might be painful.  We might think it is way too much and it is killing us.  But if we are patient as time passes we will soon come to realize the fruit in our lives is so rich and so abundant and it never could have happened with the old branches.  Jesus was right.  His Father is the farmer.  He knows just how much to take.  It is a matter of our trusting Him.  And why should we not?  No one ever anywhere has ever loved us as much as He loves us.   Be careful how you pray.  If you ask He will do it.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 9, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

The first part of John 21 is a message for our time.  The economy not only of our nation but the world continues to spiral downwards with little hope for the rest of this calendar year.  Millions of people are unemployed and losing their homes.  It is a scary time that can easily fill us with fear for the future.   John 21 tells of Jesus’ disciples fishing for an entire night with nothing to show for their labor.   Then Jesus told them to cast out their nets one more time.   If they had not known Him they would have laughed at the absurdity.   They were almost to shore.  There would not be anything worthwhile this close to land.   However, they knew Jesus and obeyed.   Verse 6 reads, “And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish.”   John goes on to tell us there were 153 big fish.   When Jesus tells us to do something He does not reward us with minnows.

Times are very bleak for so many people.  We must not fear.   God will take care of us.  If you have been financially hurt this past year or if you know someone who has been hurt this is the time to trust and to help.   Sometimes  in our abundance we do not have to exercise faith but when times are filled with financial storm clouds faith becomes a real necessity.  It is time to claim the promises.   It is time to know if we obey Jesus and trust Him as Lord, He will fill our nets with something big.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 2, 2009

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

Today I gave a midterm in my Human Development class.  While I do not necessarily enjoy giving exams I do enjoy the hour and a half of sitting and looking at each of my students. That is difficult to do when I am lecturing so I treasure the exam time. Forty students, forty life stories, forty paths for a short time all gather in the same room.  One of them came bursting into the room to explain why he was absent on Tuesday.  His wife had a baby on Tuesday.  Another asked if she could have a little extra time because she only learned English in 2008.   It was an open book test and one student who ordered a book never got it.  He was struggling.  I was so pleased when the first person who finished the exam gave him her book before she left.

Another student who has difficulty staying in his seat came to me to point out another student who was silently crying.  I slipped in beside her to offer assistance but she waved me off and continued with the exam.  I hope she does well. Several are nursing students.  I wondered about the lives they will save.  Will my class help?  Some are married and really help me when we talk about babies.  One is from Africa.  What brought him to America and what was he running from?  One is an eager psyc student anxious to help people in crisis.  Another is a theology major and cannot wait to save the world.  I like being with them.  They feed me.

When God looks down upon us in His quiet moments, (Does God ever have a quiet moment?) does He wonder about us?  He knows our stories.  I wonder if He is ever puzzled by the foolish decisions we make.  I know He likes being with us.  We feed Him.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 6, 2009.

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

 

One of my favorite authors speaks of the purpose of education as preparation for service in this world and for wider service in the world to come.  Long have I considered the concept of service in the world to come.  To me an act of service is something we can do to supply a need for another.  I can understand that here.  There is so much need here.  But what need could exist in a universe without pain, heartache, starvation and sin?  There is so much yet I do not grasp.

What I do know is service is the key to growth and happiness.  When we live only to ourselves and see others only as a means to satisfy us, not only does our character shrivel but does also our joy in living.  The fullness of life comes from finding someone who needs us.   It is basic.  We need to be needed.  The one who needs us is providing service to us.

Recently I spoke with an older person who lost most of what he had labored for all his life.  When wondering how this could have any meaning at his stage of life we pondered together the concept that it was a preparation for his wider service yet to come. We must not limit our scope to now and here.  If we truly believe what Jesus promised in John 5 that when we accept His gift we step into eternity, then there is so much more for us, so many things to do, so many tasks to accomplish, so much service that needs us.  If we ever wanted to feel needed all we must do is to become a citizen of God’s Kingdom.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 7, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

Communication is without a doubt one of the most challenging tasks of humanity.  Wars are started because of miscommunication.  Marriages are shattered because of miscommunication.  Parents and children stop talking because of miscommunication. Today in the twenty-first century we have so many tools for communicating.  We can talk face to face.  We can send snail-mail or email.  We can Twitter or just plain scream at each other.   This day at an institution that shall go unnamed there was a communication problem.  The voice mail went down.  Thus we were notified that it was not working.   We were notified by VOICE MAIL.

Surely God must be frustrated on so many occasions while trying to send us a message.  While it is true He could send an angel that’s pretty scary.   I’m sure you have noticed in the Bible stories when an angel appears he (she) usually begins with “Fear not.”   Hebrews one begins with “in past times God spoke to us via various prophets but in these last days He has spoken to us through His Son.”  Nothing ever has surpassed the life and ministry of Jesus for revealing to us the true nature of the Father.

Recently, someone expressed to me that Jesus and another prophet of a very large religion were really the same. Apparently they never noticed that one began his movement with acts of extreme violence while the only time Jesus ever became the least bit violent was when He drove the money changers from the temple because they were abusing the poor.

If we want to hear from God, if we want to hear what He has to say to us, if we want to know how to live our lives, we need to look to Jesus.   He is the ultimate communicator of what God wants us to know

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 4, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

I was observing one of our student teachers practice teaching in a local 3rd grade.  I was sitting in the back of the room and noticed one little guy giving me the eye.

Finally he got up from his desk, came back and asked, “Who are you?”

Giving him a big smile I said, “I’m your teacher’s teacher.”  Nodding at me he went back to his work. Maybe five minutes had past and he was back again.

This time he said, “If my teacher has a teacher, do you have a teacher?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I do.” I was wondering if he would be back later to ask, “Does your teacher have a teacher?”   But he never did.

Yes, I do have a teacher, lots of them.  My wife teaches me lots of things.   My students teach me patience and long-suffering.   However, my best teacher is Paul.     In his writing there is a treasure trove of ideas about Jesus.   I continue to marvel at the close of Ephesians 1 where Paul extols the glory of Jesus and how exalted Jesus is.

Then comes the following in chapter 2, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

If that doesn’t light your fire I am sorry to tell you the bad news. You are mentally dead!

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 5, 2010

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

Ecclesiastes 1:18 says, “In much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”   This is part of Solomon’s dissertation on the futility of life.  The more we know about the world the more we learn of man’s inhumanity to man.  The more we know about ourselves the more knowledgeable we become of our defects and natural depravity.  If one is speaking of the end result of much education and study then Solomon is absolutely right.   With knowledge comes despair because injustice and pain just keep on going.

However, it is imperative to say Solomon is not completely right and had he known Jesus he surely would have added an exception.  To know Jesus is to know what God is really like.  To know Jesus is to know there is hope for a better tomorrow.  Not all tomorrows will be like all our yesterdays. The sun will not always come up and go down with the same wearisome effects. To know Jesus is to know that character growth and godliness contribute to a better eternity with God and it is not merely something that will decay in the ground with those who never bothered to better themselves.

Had Solomon known Jesus he most likely would have amended Ecclesiastes 1:18 to read something like this.  “In most wisdom there is much grief, and he who increases worldly knowledge will increase sorrow.  But he who learns much about Jesus will grow in wisdom and joy.”

Jesus was a game changer. He took the human experience and turned it from futility to purpose.  Jesus showed us that life is full of pain but only for now because a richer, better, fuller future awaits those who grow in Him.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 4, 2010

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

Rogerbothwell.org