Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

I don’t follow the game show Jeopardy! too closely, just catching a show here and there. But it does catch my attention when I hear about a champion that keeps winning night after night. Such has been the case with the current Jeopardy! champion Matt Omodio who, as of Thursday, September 30, 2021 has won 32 games and $1,212,401.  That’s absolutely amazing!   What impresses me about Jeopardy! champions is the amount of knowledge they carry around in their heads. After all, they are being asked to come up with information (albeit often trivial information) about literature, history, art, geography, pop culture, science, etc., etc.  And those who win day after day, and especially those who win week after week, are demonstrating an incredible breadth and depth of information that somewhere along the line they have studied, somehow learned, or simply absorbed.  Let me assure you that, although I might come up with a right answer here and there, I could never be a Jeopardy! champion. My know

Have you ever just wanted to listen to a song over and over again to the point that you keep on hitting the repeat button (or icon)? For some reason a song gets to you and you want to hear it again and again. Maybe you end up playing it so many times, the people around you begin to beg you to please play something else!  Such has been the case for me with two songs recently that I discovered on Spotify. The first song is “Shepherd” recorded by both Leeland and Cece Winans. It’s a song that encourages us to trust Jesus as our Shepherd, believing that as we do, everything in life will be so much better. The second song is “Be My Shalom” by Evan Craft. In fact, he recorded the song in English, Spanish, and in a bilingual version. The song is a prayer for the comfort, healing, and peace that Jesus our Shepherd is able to bring into our lives by means of his Holy Spirit.  For some reason, these two songs have resonated with me in recent days both musically and lyrically such that, I keep pl

This past week, my two brothers and I took our annual trip to the US Open in Queens, NY. It’s always an exciting day, watching tennis players from around the world fight to move on to the next round, and possibly into the finals. This year has been especially exciting as throughout the tournament there have been multiple upsets and the rising of some very young stars, including three 18 year-olds.  What I noticed the day we were there, as well as in the matches I’ve watched on TV, the crowd seems to almost always get behind the underdog, even if they’ve cheered for the higher ranked player in the past.  The second match that my brothers and I got to watch was between Elena Svitolina (Ukraine), who was the fifth seed, and a young unseeded player who seemed to come out of nowhere, Leyla Fernandez (Canada).  Leyla had already beaten the 16th seed, Angelique Kerber, and the #3 seed, Noemi Osaka who has been a crowd favorite. In each of these matches, including the one that my brothers and

On Wednesday evening, here in New Jersey and throughout the New York metropolitan region, we experienced the rage of what was left of hurricane Ida. That night the winds howled, the rains came pounding down, and the flood waters rose. Of course, it was not near to the destruction that the people of New Orleans experienced while Ida was still a full-blown hurricane. Yet, the flooding and damage was significant.  And sadly, quite number of people lost their lives.   The day after the storm was a completely different story.  The sun was shining brightly. The sky was a clear blue. A gentle breeze was blowing. The humidity was gone and the temperature was as comfortable as it gets. For sure, what a difference a day makes! But it’s often like that the day after a storm.  One day it’s dark and stormy; the next day it’s as if nothing had happened—except for any aftermath we might be facing.  It makes me think of what it must have been like for Jesus’ disciples on that night when out at sea, th