Roger Bothwell

I had a friend who treated the Bible as if it were the ultimate puzzle book filled with anagrams, numerology, mystic secrets and cryptic messages formed from taking letters out of context and forming words in English.  I never could get him to understand that his cryptic messages only worked in English and not Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of Scripture.  He also maintained the King James Version was the only legitimate version.  Again I couldn’t get him to understand that not everyone in the world spoke English. Spanish and French people need to have and use their translations. 
 
It is true there are some chapters in Daniel and Revelation that seem very mysterious but they are able to be understood in the light of history. They are not to be treated as Sunday Morning New York Times Crossword Puzzles.  The intent of God giving us His word is explained to us by Paul.  He wrote to Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”  We wonder what Paul meant by “Scripture.”  It would have been the height of arrogance for him to have assumed his letters would be regarded equally with the works of Moses, etc.  Today we do regard them to be equal.
 
The Bible was given to us that we might find salvation.  It is there to aid us through the cares of this world into an assured understanding of just how good God is and what He was and is willing to do to make sure we are saved.  If you enjoy puzzles, go buy a book of puzzles.  If you want to live forever, experience the excitement of a living Jesus in the pages of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Ninety year old former president Jimmy Carter is showing the world how a real Christian faces eternity.  When diagnosed with what could be terminal cancer he said, “I am ready for anything and looking forward to a new adventure.”   What a wonderful adventure is before him.  He will close his eyes and wake up to see the Jesus who he has loved all his life.  This past weekend President Carter taught his number six hundred and something Sunday School class.  He spoke of love which is exactly what our message is all about.  Love is the heart and soul of the Gospel.  The Good News is we are loved.
 
Jesus wants us to be filled with assurance.  If we believe He tells the truth how can we doubt our salvation?   Many people I know will say, “Yes, I trust Jesus.  It is me I don’t trust.”  Well, you shouldn’t trust yourself.  You are not worthy.  You never were and never will be.  It is all about Jesus and not about you or me.  Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled neither let it be afraid.”  He also said, “Fear not for I am with you even unto the end of the world.”
 
Jesus doesn’t care if you are a Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Adventist, Mormon, or Jehovah Witness.   Church membership isn’t the ticket to eternity.  Accepting the freely offered gift is the ticket.  “Freely offered gift” is a redundancy.  If it isn’t free than it isn’t a gift.  Paul said it so well, “The gift of God is eternal life.”  Can we please stop worrying about our performance and cease looking at ourselves?  Smash the mirrors.  Rejoice in the One who promises you the best adventure ever.  It’s only one heartbeat away. 

A week ago I wrote concerning my mental instability regarding my set of Harvard Classics that is blue but has a brown volume seven.  I received a large amount of correspondence regarding the offending book.   The overwhelming suggestion was that I would be much more mentally at ease if I ordered the advertised blue volume on Amazon.  Therefore I did so.  Yesterday the postman delivered the ordered volume.  I need to report that I am in a more dire condition than before.
 
Despite my care in ordering the needed blue volume I received another brown volume seven. The psychological dissidence is very disturbing.  I need to warn those who advised me to proceed with the purchase that you will be billed for your portion of my psychiatric fees.  Fees will be divided equally among those who advised to go for it. Responsibility can be most disconcerting.
 
For thousands of years Lucifer has been disconcertingly trying to make God responsible for the havoc that he, Lucifer, has created.  Because God has granted us free will, Lucifer and we have used that free will to destroy that which is good.  Thus God has been battling to save us from Lucifer and ourselves. The cross was the apex of the conflict in which God paid the price for our sins but did not, and I repeat, did not accept responsible for the horror.  Should God do so Lucifer could claim victory.  In the Book of Revelation we read of a war in heaven.  Obviously this was not a physical war.  How could there be when one side is all powerful?  It was a psychological war that is still raging.   Let us join God in defeating Lucifer by accepting Jesus’ gift of grace. Let us do all we can to bring this conflict to its so needed end so all will know forever who is and was responsible.

Some evenings are just about perfect.  Try to imagine a small New England town park.  Add to it being with your best friend, 78 degrees, a clear sky with a half moon, katydids in the trees, an ice cream truck, small children laughing and playing on the newly mown grass. Add to this idyllic scene one of best country bands ever, playing from the town gazebo.  Watch a couple of old babes trying to revive their youth by dancing on the lawn to the classics about Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and, of course, sweet Georgia.  If one closed their eyes they could have been serenaded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Blake Shelton and be on the road again with Willie Nelson.  Sorry, there was no Dolly Parton, it was an all male band.  The mosquitoes were few and the summer breeze was an evening zephyr.
 
We were sorry it had to come to an end.  Heaven isn’t going to be all classical music or hymns.  God is very eclectic, if He weren’t, He wouldn’t have passed out such a wide variety of gifts.  But I don’t imagine the songs there will be about heartaches and tears on pillows and drinking beer sitting on the end of the dock and Folsom Prison.  Actually, the evening was quite grand knowing there would be no more prisons or tears.
 
Sometimes we get a taste of the abundant life.  No, that is a wrong thing to say.  Jesus would have us feast on the abundant life.   He promised, “I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”  That is not just for the future.  That is also for now.  Don’t miss out.  Make Jesus the Lord of your life right now.

This afternoon I watched a small flock of sparrows trying, without success, to get food out of our birdfeeder. It is one of those feeders with a door that closes if too much weight is on the perch.  Sometimes it keeps the squirrels out but not usually.  They are smart enough to eventually thwart it.  The birds were flocking onto the perch thus making too much weight and thus closing the door.  No one could eat because too many were trying to eat.  This would be a good illustration regarding too many people eating off the government.  But that would be getting into politics so I will not go there.  Instead we can use the sparrows to talk about the disastrous effects of selfishness.
 
At first I wanted to excuse the sparrows because they were ignorant and did not know any better but people do.  However, on second thought most people don’t understand. When we live in a “me first, me first” culture, some end up with too much and some end up with too little.  Oops, that is also getting into politics.  
 
Let’s try this.  The key to happiness is service.  The more we do for others the happier our lives.  This is a major construct of Christianity.  Jesus did not call us to be rulers of others but to care for others.  This results in the abundant life that He promised us in John 10:10.  If someone is sitting home alone feeling neglected the solution is getting involved with others.  This can happen in a family, in a church, in a civic club or in a hospital doing volunteer work.  The idea is to get the focus off of self and unto others.
 
If only I could have gotten the sparrows to understand.

Just two weeks ago if asked what kind of squirrels do you have in your neighborhood I would have responded, “Gray and red.”  I had no idea that we had flying squirrels.  It seems they are nocturnal and since I am diurnal I had no knowledge of these big eyed creatures.  But for the past two weeks one has taken up residence at night at our bird feeder.
 
I am delighted to learn something new about my own backyard but at the same time I am a bit chagrinned regarding my ignorance. It has been a good experience for me.  It reminds me of how little I really know.  Occasionally someone will phone me asking a Bible question.  When I was much younger I would pontificate answers with great authority.  However, as the years have passed by, I have become aware of the vastness of Scripture and my very minuscule knowledge.  Also, some of what I thought was so I now know isn’t or wasn’t so.
 
The smartest time in my life was when I graduated from high school.  It has been an intellectual downhill journey ever since.   I have discovered that the more education one obtains the more aware they become of how much there is to learn and how little we know and how little time there is to learn more. Once I heard someone bragging about her education and wondered if she got her degree from a Cracker Jack box.
 
If you would enjoy the treat of being humbled, just spend a few evenings on a clear night enjoying the two thousand plus individual stars we can see with our unaided eye.  If that were all there was we would be overwhelmed.  But there is so much more, much more, much more, much more to learn.

There she sat, calmly looking at us through the glass door of our woodstove.  She did not seem upset and obviously had no idea of her precarious situation.  She was a sparrow that had come down the stovepipe into our family room.  The odds on her finding her way back up the pipe and out to freedom seemed very minimal.  My wife rescued her and set her free.  The last we saw her was on a branch of a Japanese maple.
 
We live in a world rife with weapons designed to kill millions.  There are groups who think they will be doing God a great service if they can use them.  How they can think this is beyond my comprehension. Obviously their Allah is not the same God as our loving heavenly Father.  The reason is while they think Jesus was a prophet they do not see Him as a duplicate character of our Father.   Jesus did say, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.”
 
While I do not want to spread fear and upset the tranquility of our lives, it would be Pollyannaish to ignore reality.  No, we should not be having our children jump under their school desks like some of us did in the 60’s.  But neither should we be thinking something horrible is impossible.  We don’t want to be like a sparrow calmly sitting in a stove.  Eternity is a topic worthy of our consideration and Jesus is the one and only hope for a world almost out of control.
 
We must also remember that Jesus offers us peace.  He did say, “Peace I leave with you. . . . Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not let it be afraid.”   

Are you as irritated as I when the phone rings and you get up out of your easy chair, rush across the room, only to listen to a recorded message telling you that you have been called in response to an inquiry you made?  You know you never made any such inquiry.
 
In the mornings when I record the day’s devotional on our 800 line* I sometimes discover on the messages left behind that one of those machines called our machine.  In order for it to send its message it first has to listen to ours.  Only then can it leave its message.  I am amused at the idea of the machines talking to each other.  I wish their machine would as a result of listening to our machine repent.  If so then it would stop calling you and me.  A hundred years from now, if Jesus has not yet returned, we can send our personal robot to church in our self driving cars to listen to the robot the pastor sent.  Upon returning home our robot can deliver to us a word for word recitation of the morning sermon.
 
Sometimes I get the feeling that even though we are in church in the flesh that the same routines and the same prayers are not much different from robots.  If we have a friend to friend relationship with God I doubt if saying the same thing over and over really works.  Imagine an evening out with friends where you said the very same things with the very same words that you said the week before and the week before that. Jesus did say to us in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

I’m finishing up a most interesting biography of the Wright brothers and I am very impressed with the extraordinary amount of work and risk of life itself that went into their amazing feat, which had defied so many others who had tried.   Many biographies are real snoozers while this one is a page turner.
 
I imagine that most of us think a biography of our lives would be very interesting, while an unfortunate few might think otherwise about themselves.  All of us are authors.  Each of us, even though we never put pen to paper, are busy authoring an autobiography.  We are a walking collection of experiences and memories, good and bad.
 
The joy of writing an autobiography is our power of choice as to which stories about ourselves we wish to remember or share.  I know some people seem to think because they have given their lives to God that they are no longer in charge.  They think they have stopped writing an autobiography and that God is writing a biography for them.  So often they speak of some decision they have made and they say God told them to do such and such.  What is nice about this is they have ceased to be responsible for what they do.  However it turns out, they can blame God.  If it is a good outcome they rejoice and are thankful.  If the results are not so good they say God is trying to teach them something.

I believe God gave us a mind and the freedom to use that mind. I believe each of us is writing an autobiography. God is not the author of our lives but He is an excellent writing coach.

Something caught my eye today while reading I Kings.  In chapter 7 we find the specs for the construction of Solomon’s magnificent temple.  When we get to verses 23 ff. we find the details for the giant laver in the courtyard.  Verse 23 reads as follows, “He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.”  Obviously the writer of Kings (We are not sure who that was.) wasn’t a mathematician or was into rounding off numbers.  I am not a mathematician so if I am wrong on this will a real mathematician please correct me.  If the laver was a perfect circle and I am sure it was, then the laver was either 31.4 cubits around and 10 cubits across or it was 30 cubits around and 9.55414  cubits across not 10.
 
Before someone gets sweaty about the Bible not being perfectly accurate please let me point out the function of Scripture.  It is not and was not intended to be a scientific or mathematical record of God’s dealings with His people.  The Books of I and II Kings and other books were historical records of God’s interactions with Israel.  In them we find stories of His guiding and often His frustration with humans.   In II Timothy 3 Paul said this about Scripture.  “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
 
The Bible is all about Jesus and grace and redemption and love and forgiveness and character building and nobility and hope and unselfishness.  It was never intended to be a math or science book.