Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

This past Monday, after a hiatus of a few months, I went back to the weekly spin class I used to attend. Now, in case you don’t know what spin is, let me explain. You are on a stationary bike that mimics the feels of a real bike, especially because you can stand when you make the tension high enough (as if you are going uphill) and pedal extremely fast to give the feel of going downhill or racing. The class is very fast paced as you pedal to the music (some of which I like and some of which I don’) and follow the instructor’s directions the best that you can. The class I take is an hour long and includes a lot of “hills” as well as some speed work. By the end of the hour, I am dripping with sweat and exhausted. In fact, this past week I burned about 630 calories in the one hour.   The one downside of riding on a spin bike—or any kind of stationary bike, for that matter—is that in spite of all your effort, you always end up where you began. For example, although the mile counte...

Yesterday afternoon I went down to one of our nearby beaches to do a run on the boardwalk. It had been a beautiful day, with the temperatures in the low to mid-60’s and just a slight wind. What I didn’t realize was that by the time I got down to the boardwalk for my run, the wind had picked up considerably, especially along the ocean. In fact, it was now a cold wind coming right off the water—a southeast wind to be exact, which is always the most difficult to deal with.   Since I had driven to the north end of the boardwalk, I began by running south right into the wind. And for almost two miles, I was fighting for just about every step. As I did, all I could think to myself was that things would be different once I turned around to run back north. And sure enough they were. Once I hit the other end of the boardwalk and turned around (after touching the post at the end of the fence, which all of us OCD runners do!), I was no longer running into the wind. Instead, the wind was n...

I’m sure that we are all pretty upset by what has taken place this past week in Israel. Each time I hear the news it’s more terrible and shocking to think of the kind of violence that was inflicted upon families who were just going about their daily routines, young people enjoying a concert—even babies being purposefully slaughtered! It’s unthinkable! And it’s now a terrible situation that impacts the lives of so many on both sides of the border.    One would think that by this time in the history of the world, these kinds of things would cease to exist. With all the calls for peace and the lessons that we thought were learned after two world wars, we would think our world has learned its lessons. But obviously, such is not the case. We have continued to see the outbreak of wars throughout the decades, with one website stating, “There are 32 ongoing conflicts in the world right now, ranging from drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts, and civil wars.” (Wisevoter.c...

Have you noticed how long it takes for the sun to rise this time of year—at least here in the US northeast?  Whereas, during the spring and summer I can be out for a run or bike ride by 6:30 am or earlier, with the sun having risen long before then, now at 6:30 am it is still dark. Thus, you won’t find me doing early morning runs or bike rides this time of year. I don’t really like going out on the roads in the dark. And, to be honest, it is a little harder to get out of bed and out of the house when it’s so dark.  Thankfully, unlike some other parts of the world that have but a few hours of sun during their winters, here the sun does eventually rise and give to us at least 10 hours of daylight. I can only imagine how difficult it is to live in a place that has just a couple hours of sunlight. In fact, in some places (e.g. Iceland), the sun doesn’t rise for months on end! In every place, however, eventually the sun does rise again. (And in some places it doesn’t set at all thr...