Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

Here we are less than one week away from Christmas. I know some of you are panicking. There is yet shopping to be done. The cookies need to be baked. The meals need to be prepped and the house cleaned. Oh, and don’t forget all the wrapping!  I know at times it can be a bit overwhelming, preparing for Christmas. For sure, Christmas can be filled with lots and lots of stress. Yet, I dare to say, most of us wouldn’t trade the world for it.   As I read the gospel account of that very first Christmas—i.e., the events surrounding the birth of Jesus—I can’t help but notice that, that first Christmas was as well filled with all kinds of stressors. For one, Mary and Joseph had to deal with the reality that Mary was pregnant before they were married. After all, who would have actually believed that she had become pregnant by means of the Holy Spirit? For sure, Joseph had to make a very hard and stressful decision as to whether or not he should move ahead with his marriage to Mary. ...

I was thinking recently of how the Christmas lights come at just the right time of the year. After all, December and the winter months to follow are some of the hardest months of the year (at least here in the northern hemisphere). Not only is it cold and the weather unpredictable, but the days are short and the nights long. Each day of December, at least up until December 21 or 22 (approximately), the days get shorter and shorter—and the nights longer and longer. And even after that, any lengthening of the days has zero effect upon us. Thankfully, it is during these dark days of December that we have Christmas. It is during this particular month that we find the increase in darkness counterbalanced by the brightness of the lights of Christmas. In spite of the fact that the days are getting shorter and darker, we often call this month, “The  Season of Light.” And, that’s exactly what Christmas is all about: light shining into darkness. As the prophet Isaiah wrote long ago, “The peo...

Last weekend, Kim and I went to a local park with our son Jonathan’s family. While the adults  walked, our two grandsons Jesse and Jack rode their balance bikes around the park. (The youngest, Caleb, was in the stroller.)  At one point, Jesse, the older of the two, yelled to the rest of us, “Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, you’ve got to come see this!” “What is it, Jesse?” we replied. “Hurry! Look! Come over here! It’s a puddle of ice!”  Dutifully, and with the most excited faces we could put on, we all went to see what all the excitement was about. Well, there it was: a very normal looking puddle that had frozen over—at least to some degree. For most of us, it was anything but all that exciting. For Jesse, however, it was the most exciting thing he has seen all day—maybe all week!  It’s true that, when we are young the small things in life can feel very exciting. Unfortunately, as we age, it takes much more to wow us. No longer does a puddle of ice or a butterfly flitti...