Category: devotional

Summer is gone.  The direct rays of the sun have moved across the equator.  Birds are moving south. Trees are turning color. Coats and jackets are on display.  Motorcycles with For Sale signs are in front yards. Yellow school buses slow our commutes to work. Ice cream stores are closing. One could easily become a bit melancholy but just as good times are past good times are coming. “This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”  Psalm 118:24.

In Matthew 5 Jesus said, “Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”  And in Proverbs 17:2 we read, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”  Most often our lives are what we create.  If we want to be happy we can choose happy objects for our attention.  Or it can be just the opposite.

There is a sickness in Christianity.  It is “Negativitis” or “Or isn’t bad news wonderful?”  The infected don’t want to hear anything good because they believe there will be a horrible time of trouble before Jesus comes. If we are bearers of Good News, then we must not want Jesus to return.  Surely this mode of thought must shorten life because of the continual down it produces.  Then again it can be useful for them because the sooner they die the sooner it will seem for them that Jesus has returned.  There is a plus to this.

Life will bring its share of disappointments and pain.  Instead of manufacturing them by dwelling on the bad news of Fox, CBS and the other networks let’s look for the good things and we can live lives that are the envy of all who meet us.

Written by Roger Bothwell on September 23, 2013

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

A young lady at a sales counter said to me, “Have a nice one.”  Yesterday someone said to me, “Take care.”  Last weekend someone said to me, “God bless.”  Of course, I think I know what they meant but a horrible streak of cynicism wanted to ask, “Nice what?” or “Care of what?” or “Bless what?”

I hear people blaming our abbreviated speaking on our texting to our “BFF” and “LOL.”  However, I don’t think so. I believe it has something to do with intimacy.  It is easier to say “love you” than “I love you.”  By adding the “I” we have deepened the meaning.  By adding “you” to “God bless” we have personalized our feelings in a much more significant way.  You might think I am crazy and ask me to defend this position and I am not sure I can.  I just know that somehow on some level it is easier to leave off the “I”.  It feels different.

There is the issue of how do we respond when someone says, “I love you.”  Suddenly we feel obligated to return with “I love you too.”  But maybe we don’t.  Then what do we say?  “Thanks” or “Me too” or take the easy way and say, “Love you.”  Two words do not imply a commitment while three words do.  God has committed Himself to us.  John 3:16 doesn’t say, “God so loved.”  It says, “God so loved the world.”  That’s us.  Jesus didn’t say, “Father forgive.”  He said, “Father forgive them.”

Written by Roger Bothwell on September 20, 2013

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

This morning I watched a nurse dig around in the back of my hand trying to get a needle into a vein.  If I had been five or six years old I would have been deeply puzzled.  How can this be?  Every time I fell off my tricycle blood would come out my knees or arms.  Wasn’t I a bag of blood held in by my skin?  How could she puncture me and not get any blood?

As wonderful as is modern medicine it still has a long way to go.  Just as we look back on George Washington’s death because his caring doctors bled him to death, we will look back at chemotherapy as crude and primitive.  How was it that we thought the best way to treat cancer was by filling one’s body with bags of poison?  Fortunately those days are soon to end.  Genetic engineering and stem cell research are making quantum leaps forward in understanding cells and how to alter them and make them right again.  We are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139.  We are amazing creatures, complex and filled with a host of various systems, each symbiotically causing the whole to thrive.

“And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image.'” has to be the most amazing sentence ever spoken.  He made birds and fish and other orders of life.  But to make a creature in His own image was the most unselfish act of all time.  He wanted to share all the wonder of His universe.  Creatures in His image would be free to learn, grow and experience everything good.  And now He invites us to fully participate.  Jesus said, “Come ye blessed of my Father and inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the earth.”  Matt. 25:34.

Written by Roger Bothwell on September 21, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

 

Shadows are growing long.  We are just a few days until the sun quietly slips across the equator into the southern hemisphere.  Night temperatures are pushing into the forties.  The hummingbirds are gone. Chrysanthemums are everywhere taking the place of lilies and petunias. Nurseries have piles of pumpkins. There are little ones for table decorations and big ones for the front porch. Acorns crunch under foot and squirrels are planting oaks all over the yard. Yellow buses haul our most precious bundles back and forth to math, spelling and home.  Small New England towns are advertising fall festivals and political signs decorate the roadsides. Shorts are disappearing and hoodies are appearing for reasons of temperature.  There is a tinge of color in the maples making the nearby white church steeples look like postcards.  It’s a grand time.  If and when I die I want to die in March but never in September or October.

A few weeks ago my wife and I celebrated our fiftieth anniversary.  I remembered Jimmy Durante singing The September Song.

Oh it’s a long, long while, from May to December

But the days grow short, when you reach September.

When the autumn weather, turns the leaves to flame,

One hasn’t got time, for the waiting game.

 

Oh, the days, dwindle down, to a precious few.

September. November.

And these few precious days, I’ll spend with you.

These precious days, I’ll spend with you.

 

When I was forty I used to preach that going to heaven was merely a change of address. I didn’t realize then how much truth I was speaking.  Each year has gotten richer.  How can we possibly imagine adding yet another millennium?  Jesus has made it not a hope but a reality.

Written by Roger Bothwell on September 20, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

 

It was a classic scene that could have been turned into a cartoon with a caption “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. My mother told me to pick the very best one and that is Y-O-U.”   It was the side of a city building with tiered ledges.  On the top ledge sat a beautiful peregrine falcon and on the second ledge below sat a row of a couple dozen pigeons. It was breakfast time for the hawk.  I can’t imagine the pigeons didn’t know it was there.  I think they were playing the “Don’t Move” game. “If I don’t move it won’t pick me. The first one that flinches gets it.”  It’s a game my students often play when I ask a question and no one will make eye-contact with me.

This is so different from playing “Pick Up” before a baseball game where each child is jumping up and down saying, “Pick me.  Pick me.”  Some people think of salvation and eternal life in such terms.  They are frozen stiff trying to hide from Satan and they are jumping up and down begging God to pick them.  The good news is God is so much more powerful than Satan, so it doesn’t matter if Satan picks you.  Well, actually he has.  You have been on his menu for a long time.  But you have also been on God’s A-List for a long, long time.   Listen to this great text from Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee . . .”   Now I know you are tempted to say that was a private message just for Jeremiah.   So let’s read Acts10:34, it says, “God is no respecter of persons” which means all of us are treated just the same by God.  You and I are chosen!  Yeah!  Double Yeah!  Triple Yeah!

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 15, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

In Matthew 16 Jesus gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter.  It was an awesome responsibility.  Usually I do not like to have keys to places.  If I don’t have a key then it wasn’t me that messed up the place.  However, there are some keys we all desire.  We all like having a key to a new car.

The keys to the kingdom are frightening to have and it wasn’t just Peter who received them.  We all get them.  He used his well.  In Acts 2 he opened the kingdom to over three thousand people.  I’m sure each of us would be thrilled to do that.  The responsible part comes when we realize we can by our lack of care and love close and lock the door to the kingdom for some.

I have mixed feelings about being a teacher.  Over and over through the years I talk to people who have left the church because they feel a teacher mistreated them.   The problem is sometimes teachers have to be tough on students.   Often students fail to turn in assignments or attend class and when it is time to receive the consequences for their behavior it is never their fault.  That bad grade was because the teacher was uncaring and mean.

If students only knew the pain a teacher (a good teacher) feels when it becomes necessary to fail someone.  Sometimes I reach in my pocket and pull out my keys and stare at them and wonder, “Is this just a bad grade or is this a key that will lock the door to the kingdom?”

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 29, 2008

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

Rogerbothwell.org

A neighbor down the street who has a professionally cared for lawn stopped to chat with another neighbor who has intensely labored to also have a beautiful lawn.  During the course of a short conversation the one from down the street told the hard working neighbor that his lawn was the wrong color green. Can you imagine?  The wrong color green!!  How audacious!

Reality is that most likely several times a week we also say the wrong things to people and are too dumb to realize it.  However, sometimes we do know it.  As soon as it comes off the tongue, we know it.  Then begins the game of trying to politely back track.  It is well nigh impossible to do that.

In light of real truth known only to God, I wonder if we ever say anything that is on the mark.  God must shake His head and wonder at our audacity to speak with such confidence about so many things.

Maybe the only thing we really do know for sure is that we are sinners in need, and we have a wonderful Savior named Jesus Christ.  That is enough.

Written by Roger Bothwell on July 27, 2000

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

 

 

The fallen hawk lay on the forest floor.  He had not been dead long.  He was still beautiful and noble.  Soon he would return to the dust of the forest to become part of a flower, tree or vine.  How high had he flown?  What vistas had he seen? What conquests over mice and rabbits nourished him?  Why was his piercing scream now silent?  Was it old age?  Had he lived his three score and ten?  Or had a hunter used him for target practice? There in death his remains would provide the essentials of life for a host of other creatures.  His death would provide life.

Thankfully God will take the memory of our personhood and on resurrection morning put it in a brand new immortal frame and body. Jesus, who not only proclaimed Himself to be the resurrection and the life but also proved it, promises us so much more than decades of limited walk.  Centuries and millenniums await us.

We too shall soar like hawks and eagles with nothing to bring us down.  Surely one of the most marvelous verses of all scripture is Isaiah 40:31, “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Written by Roger Bothwell on September 14, 2000

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94547

Rogerbothwell.org

While driving to work this morning I heard a wonderful quote from George Washington penned to Parke Custis.  He wrote, “I had rather be on my farm than be the emperor of the world.”  There is much to be said for a quiet life.  Perhaps all of us have temporarily been struck with a desire to be famous or very important.  Hopefully the disease passes quickly.  However, in some I see it is a permanent affliction.  James and John were infected.  They even got their mother to try to influence Jesus to save power positions for them in the new kingdom.  I watch administrators battle with budgets, disgruntled board members and even with each other and I am so happy to be a teacher.  It is the greatest job in the world.  Other people have to worry about how to pay me and being with the students is a daily treat.

Just today one of my students told me she wanted to transfer to another college because our college is too quiet.  Our college town is very small and surrounded by fields and forests.  She told me at night she can hear strange sounds that sound like animals.  I reminded her that those animals were far less dangerous than the sounds of the urban animals where she said she wanted to go.

Emily Dickenson wrote, “Success is sweetest to those who ne’er succeeded.”  I’m sure she was right.  The issue is to define success.  Surely it is defined as differently as there are people.  However, I am reminded that when God first made Adam and Eve, He put them is a garden.

Written by Roger Bothwell on February 22, 2011

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

Rogerbothwell.org

 

In Romans 1 Paul speaks of knowing God by seeing the things He has made.  In Hebrews 1 he speaks of knowing God through the ultimate revelation – Jesus.  In Ezekiel 36 we read, “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes.”  God in nature – the Father, God in history – Jesus, God within us – the Holy Spirit.

The concept of a Trinity taunts our finite intellects and reminds us of our limitations.  Our feeble attempts at a cogent explanation fall so short we have invited unbelievers to accuse us of polytheism, of which we are not.  The problem is our inability to see through Paul’s dark glass.  God is a revealer of Himself and in His good wisdom He has chosen to remain a mystery.  While He could He has not removed grounds for doubt.  There must be something to be gained by intellectually grabbling with His existence, the nature of His being, and His purposes to be a good God and yet tolerate acts of despicable horror on earth. “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”  Hebrew 11:6

Does growth only come at the expense of careful exploration of ideas so near to understanding that we are motivated to stretch just a bit more and thus receive the rewards promised above?  Is one of life’s great joys the discovery process?  If God answered all our questions, would that turn us into nothing other than intellectual rubber stamps.  Jesus promised us in the Sermon on the Mount that we will see God, but somehow I think there will always be something just beyond the horizon of our thoughts.

Written by Roger Bothwell on May 28, 2012

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

Rogerbothwell.org