Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

Do you remember what it was like waiting for Christmas when you were a child? For my siblings and me, it was a long, long wait. The month of December seemed to drag on and on, especially that last week leading up to Christmas. We couldn’t wait for Christmas to arrive when we would all hurry downstairs to the Christmas tree and find the gifts that had our names on them. It felt like we were forever waiting for Christmas.   And, since we opened our presents on Christmas morning, the night between Christmas eve and Christmas morning felt like the longest night of the year!   In fact, one year my younger brother Chris (he was about seven at the time) just couldn’t make it through the night.   Somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m. he snuck downstairs to peek at the tree. Upon seeing the gifts under the tree, he got so excited that he came back upstairs, woke each of us up, urging us to get downstairs. Soon, long before the sun was coming up, the whole fami...

This past week my Aunt Catherine passed away at 95 years old. (She would have been 96 this coming January.). For the past five years, I have overseen her care, including having moved her out of the Bronx where she lived most of her life (she was in her last apartment for 41 years!), to a facility closer to where I live here near the Jersey Shore. For her the move was a huge change in lifestyle.   She was 92 years old at the time and went from living just a couple of blocks from an elevated train that could rock the apartment and a neighborhood that was extremely crowded, to a building that was just a few blocks from the beach and across from a small lake. It was a beautiful setting; she could even see the beach from her window.   After having been in her new place for just a few weeks, Aunt Catherine said to me one day, “You know I’m on a mission!”   I asked her what she meant. She said, her mission was to tell everyone in the facility where she now live...

--> This is a time of year when many of us find ourselves waiting for and preparing for the arrival of guests who are coming to a holiday dinner, an open house, or even to spend a few days and nights with us. For Kim and me that means waiting for the arrival of our three children who will come to spend the holidays with us. And, that means a lot of preparation—e.g. getting the beds ready, shopping for food, and doing all the other things necessary to take proper care of our guests—even if they are our kids!   But guess what! We can’t wait until they come! In fact, when I know that our children are coming—or any other guest for the matter—I find myself filled with such anticipation that I am constantly looking out the window to catch a glimpse of their arrival.   As the time gets closer to the hour they said they would arrive, the more I tend to peek out the window, maybe even pushing back the curtains or the blinds to see if their car is coming down the roa...