Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

This past week I had the opportunity to spend a few days attending meetings at the Louisville Institute in Louisville, Kentucky.   Just about all of my time was spent at the conference center just outside of the city.   On my final day, however, I had a few hours before having to catch my flight.   That being the case, I, along with another conference participant, visited the Louisville Slugger bat factory and museum.   Although the museum was interesting—especially seeing bats used by Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio and holding bats used by Derek Jeter and David Ortiz—I was most interested in how the bats are made.   The whole process is very detailed and precise.   And, I learned something I did not know: every major league baseball player has their bats made specifically according to their preferences.   That is, within the parameters determined by MLB, each player can determine the particular weight of their bat, width of their handle and barrel, w...

After a year of waiting, yesterday afternoon Kim and I finally closed on our house here in Eatontown, NJ.   It was July 2015 when we first saw the house and felt it would be the right house for us as a family and for our ministry at Shrewsbury First Assembly.   But the end of August we had signed the contracts and began the mortgage and inspection processes.   During the inspection, however, an old oil tank was discovered and subsequently the fact that some oil had leaked into the soil. Of course, the sellers were responsible for the remediation (thankfully for them they had insurance that covered the cost). By early September we had to make a decision. Would we bail out of the deal or would we continue? We decided that this was the house for us and, since the house was empty, we made an agreement with the sellers to move into the house and lease it from them at a discounted rate until the remediation was complete.   Once the work was completed we would go into ...

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been following the U.S. Open Tennis Championship relatively closely.   I attended on the first day of the tournament, along with my son Nathaniel and my two brothers.   Since that day I’ve been following the matches on the U.S. Open app on my phone and watching as many matches as I can on TV.   Like any kind of sporting event, once you get into it, the drama of both the individual matches and the tournament as a whole captivate you. One of the most intriguing parts of the tournament is seeing new players rising in the ranks and less ranked or unranked players defeating higher ranked players.   In fact, just this week there were two major upsets: Andrew Murray (2) was defeated by Kei Nishikori (6) and Sereena Williams (1) was defeated by Karolina Pliskova (10).   It is always amazing to see upsets such as these.   But, what is most interesting to me is the reaction of the crowd.   As much as the crowd loves to root...

A number of years ago, my grandmother on my father’s side went to the doctor for her regular check-up.   At the time she was 85 years old. The doctor was probably in his thirties.   As the doctor listened to her heart he said to my grandmother, “Your heart is good for your age.” To which my grandmother replied, in her strong Greek accent, “I don’t want a heart good for my age; I want a heart that’s good for your age!”   Of course they both laughed—as did I when she told me the story.   (Even today I miss her sense of humor!) We all know how important a strong heart is to one’s overall physical health.   That’s why this past year I began to try to increase my exercise routine, especially trying to get much more cardio exercise than I was previously getting (including a weekly spin class!).   I began to realize that if I was not purposeful about eating right and exercising more, my body, and especially my heart, would weaken and I would not be able to w...