Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

As some of you may know, as of this week (actually, yesterday) I am now another year older. It’s amazing to think how quickly time has gone by, both the decades as well as the individual years. Some of you can relate well—especially, those of you who are a bit older.  After all, when we are young, one year, no less a decade, seems so much longer than when we have a few more years under our belt. The older we get, the quicker time seems to go by. Right now, for me the years seem to be flying! As I look back it seems like it was just a few years ago that Kim and I were getting married and starting our life together. (We celebrated 37 years this past month!)  It seems like it was just a few years ago that our kids were piling into the van to go somewhere as a family or riding their bikes around the neighborhood or sitting around a dinner table, all talking at the same time as we tried to get through a meal. It seems like it was just a few years ago that Kim and I were starting ou...

I know there are some people, like my son Nathaniel, who follow the tides and swells and temperatures of the ocean by means of an app so they know what to expect when they go to the beach with their surfboard. The rest of us, however, as we walk onto the beach are wondering how large the waves are going to be, whether it is high tide or low tide, and what the water temperature is. We look to see if the lifeguards have put out the green flags, yellow flags, or red flags, each indicating the level of danger. Most of us go to the beach with the highest of hopes, but we understand that the ocean can be unpredictable, thus we don’t really know what to expect.  Living as close to the beach as I do (I’m about 5 miles from Long Branch, NJ), I’m down there quite often. And like most people, I usually don’t know what to expect. Recently, two days in a row, I went to the beach hoping to take a good swim only to find the waters very rough and the wind blowing strong and steady. The water was n...

This week Kim and I have been caring for Odin, Joanna and Dan’s greyhound. He’s a really good dog, but has one major issue that sometimes makes it a bit hard to care for him: he’s deathly afraid of the sound thunder—or fireworks or any other loud noises for that matter. Our dog Sadie gets nervous at such sounds, but not like Odin who will end up shaking in a corner and/or simply freeze. At that point, he won’t eat, sit with us, or go for a walk. The poor dog becomes completely dominated by his fear and anxiety.   Odin chilling..no thunder! In fact, just yesterday morning as we were waking up, a thunderstorm rolled in. Predictably, with the first clap of thunder, Odin ran up the stairs and ended up in our bedroom in a panic. It is always so sad to see how frightened he becomes. Again, Sadie is as well afraid and will start to pant a bit, but Odin was shaking and would not move. Thankfully, the storm didn’t last long and we were eventually able to calm him down enough for him to...

Once again Kim and I spent a couple of weeks on Lake Pleasant in the Adirondack Mountains with some of our family. Each year, while there, we take a canoe ride from our lake to another lake through a channel that is about three-quarters of a mile long. It’s a beautiful ride filled with water lilies, duck families, fish that pass under the canoe, the sound of bull frogs, and this year a young heron and it’s mother. This year, however, we never made it to the other lake. You see, about two-thirds of the way through we found our way completely blocked by a beaver dam!  We’ve seen the beaver dams in the past, and now and then even the beavers themselves. However, we have never seen a beaver dam like this one. It extended across the whole channel giving us no way to get around it. The water on the other side was 4 to 6 inches higher than on our side. And it was amazingly strong made with sticks and logs cut and shaped by the beavers and sealed together with mud.  It was an engineer...