Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

You’ve probably seen it written on social media posts, t-shirts, posters, etc.: “Keep Calm and…!”  It comes in many forms, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” “Keep Calm and Have Fun,” “Keep Calm and Keep Learning,” “Keep Calm and Keep Dancing.”  I even saw one that says, “Keep Calm and Eat a Banana!” I guess you can finish the sentence in whatever way you like.  I think we would all agree, however, keeping calm can be easier said than done. That is especially true when life is throwing it’s curveballs; when things don’t turn out the way we expected or hoped they would; when the stresses of the day seem to be mounting at an ever-increasing pace.  The world in which we live—one that is filled with all kinds of disasters, tragedies, conflict, and hardships—has a way of stirring up anxiety and fear. It’s not always easy to just “Keep Calm and….”  So what do we do when we find ourselves filling up with anxiety and fear—when it seems as if it is impossible to keep calm? Oh, I ...

One of the things I like about using a music service such as Spotify is the ability to set up playlists. By doing so, one can choose a genre of music, a set of artists or songs that fit into that genre, or even the kind of beat or vibe one wants and pull together a number of songs into a playlist. I have a bunch of playlists that I use at various times, some based on a favorite artist, some based on what I’m going to use that playlist for. For example, I have a Workout/Running playlist, a Prayer playlist, a Danny Gokey playlist, a James Taylor playlist, a Spanish Worship playlist, and more. I even have one I call, “TK4EVER”—I’ll let you guess what that one is!   The really nice thing about listening to music through a music service, as opposed to listening on the radio, is that we as listeners are completely in control. We get to choose exactly what we want to hear. And, if we don’t want to hear a song or get tired of one, we can skip or even delete that song.  Again, we ...

For Christmas, Kim bought me a new personal assistant. No, I’m not speaking about someone to replace Lisa who works as my administrative assistant in our church office. Kim bought me a Google Nest Hub that has a screen for display, built in speakers, and can control lights, my smart TV,  thermostats, play music and podcasts, etc. It even plays games!  So now all I need to do is speak commands like, “Hey Google! Turn on the kitchen lights!” or “Hey Google! Play Spotify!” or “Hey Google! Tell me today’s weather!” and, behold it happens—lights come on, music begins to play, and I get the weather. I can even set routines so that when I say, “Hey Google! Good night!” I get the next day’s weather, my first appointment for the following day, and the lights get turned off. My new personal assistant does pretty well at obeying my every command (as long as I have properly set it up!).  In some ways, it feels a bit weird for me to be barking out commands and have them obeyed as full...