Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

I was thinking the other day that, going into this Thanksgiving holiday many people talk about being thankful. We often emphasize, and rightfully so, the necessity of taking an assessment of the blessings of our lives and developing a heart of gratitude. We ask the question, “For what are you thankful?”   What is missing, however, is the object of their gratitude.   We fail to ask, “To whom are you thankful?” Thus, our gratitude is sometimes misdirected or not directed towards anyone at all! I picture it this way:   If I give my child a gift, I would expect some sort of expression of gratitude—at least a, “thanks, Dad!”   If they would go and thank other people for the gift I have given them, I’d feel as if something was wrong. The same would be true if they simply said, “I’m so thankful,” yet never express any sort of gratitude towards me personally.   All of that to say, to whom is your gratitude directed?   I’m afraid that too often we are thank...

The home we recently moved into is on “Applebey Street.”   And believe it or not, we have two apple trees on the property.   (I guess it only makes sense!)   At first we thought that they were crab apples, which are inedible. But after moving in and seeing the apples grow, we realized that these apples are “real” apples—that they are actually edible apples.   The problem is, however, most of what appear to be the good apples have all been out of our reach.   They are at the higher parts of the tree beyond where I can reach, even with a ladder.   Eventually, the apples fall off the tree and become food for the deer that live nearby, rather than for us. But, here is what we have found. Most of the apples that have fallen are really not all that attractive once we see them up close. Most of them are somewhat diseased or have insects or are just very, very ugly and hard.   The apples that were once beyond our reach and so tempting, no longer have the ...

One of the biggest challenges of coming into a new church is getting to know a whole new group of people by their names.   It’s not that the names themselves are so difficult or unfamiliar (although at times that can be the case). It is about being able to put a person’s name with their face.   It is about getting to know people by their name; being able to call people by name.   Most people say, “I’m really bad with names,” or, “I never forget a face but I can’t remember names.”   I think that’s the case for most of us. It probably has to do with how our brains work.   Learning names seems to take a lot more work and repetition.   For me, I find it most difficult to learn the names of people I only see once in a while—e.g. Sunday morning as they leave the sanctuary with the crowd. I do better with the people I see a couple of times per week or with whom I have repeated contact.   Thankfully, there are some people who have aided me by coming up to...

With the New York Mets having made it into the World Series, most of here in this New York/New Jersey area have baseball on our mind, me included. Although not all of us are diehard Mets fans, we’re excited about having one of our home teams make it this far. In fact, we are hoping to see them win the whole Series.   After all, we love cheering for our home team!    It makes me think of the old baseball song that we love to sing during the seventh inning stretch: “Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the crowd…let me root, root, root for the home team….”   The song conjures up images of a stadium filled with people cheering on their team.   Whether it’s their local professional team or their kid’s little league team, the crowd is standing and cheering and rooting for their home team.   And, it is often the cheering of the crowd that fills that team with the energy and confidence they need to keep on playing, even when they find themselves dow...

This past week I decided to do a little outside cleanup at our new home.   That meant cutting back overgrown branches and raking out leaves and debris that had collected.   As I did so, I began to realize that wrapped around many of the trees were vines that had begun to choke the life out of some of them—and had actually killed a few.   Thus in order to salvage that which was still alive, I spent most of my time chopping back the vines as close to the root as possible.   This was not the first time I’ve had to deal with vines such as these.   Growing up, there were vines that would grow around our lilac trees, blending in so well it was difficult to distinguish the leaves.   A number of years ago I had to deal with vines that would grow around our forsythia bushes.   Our neighbor at the time called them, “bad boys!”   In each case, the vines twisted themselves around our trees and shrubbery, blending in, and choking the life out of the tree ...