Pastor's Devotions by Tim Harris

This morning here in New Jersey it seems to be another dreary day.   The sky is once again overcast with a light drizzle coming down. The temperature is barely 50 degrees. It’s definitely not a beautiful May morning!   And, such has been the case for the much of the past few weeks. Have you ever felt like one day after another was just kind of dreary?   Not terrible, just dreary—like a cloud was hanging over your head and there was a cold rain falling around you.   I know I’ve had days like that. We all have and we all do.   After a while dreary days can get to our spirits and begin to drag us down.   After a bit, our hearts and minds can begin to feel a bit dreary as the joy of life seems to get lost behind the clouds of the day.   I wonder if that’s not how the psalmist was feeling when twice he wrote in Psalm 42, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?” (vss. 5 & 11) If you read through the psalm ...

For many people it’s a bit of puzzle as to why we call the day on which we remember the suffering and death of Jesus, “Good Friday.”   Especially for children, it can be quite confusing. After all, we might think that the day we remember the resurrection of Jesus would be called “Good Sunday.” But we call the day of the remembrance of his death, “Good Friday.”   At the time it didn't feel like a good Friday.  Of course, for Jesus’ first disciples it was hardly a good day. As they watched their teacher and master make his way up Golgotha’s hill, staggering under the weight of the cross beam on his back, already bloodied from the beatings he had received, they would have hardly considered it a good day. The women, including Jesus’ mother Mary, who stood at the foot of his cross watching him gasp for breath and then finally breathing his last one, would have hardly considered it a good day. Even for Jesus himself, as he hung there on that cross and cried...

Earlier this week I was doing a bit of spring cleanup around our yard when I happened to notice that one of our dogwood trees had suddenly bloomed.   Its branches were filled with pink flowers.   It was a stunning sight. And, it was a refreshing sight—a sign that spring was truly on its way and that the rest of the trees and flowers around our yard would soon be in full bloom.   That first tree to bloom was a sign of that which is about to come.   We all know, it’s one thing to see that spring has arrived based on a date on the calendar. It’s quite another to experience it by means of the budding of the trees and blooming of the flowers, the longer days and the warmth of the sun. For me, the blooming of our dogwood was what we might call, using biblical language, the firstfruits of spring! It is a forerunner of what is yet to come.   A taste of what is yet to come! In another week or so we are going to come to Resurrection Sunday, the ...

--> This week Kim and I came down to South Carolina to be with her parents who are facing some challenges and needed our help.   Since we weren’t coming down for vacation we didn’t have high expectations about what our time here would be like, except for on thing: we were looking forward to warmer weather.   Wouldn’t you know it, our first morning here we woke up to snow!   It was the first snow they had seen all year!   And, no one down here even has a brush to clean the snow off the car!   I thought it was some kind of cruel joke! We all know life is full of surprises, some good and some not so good. When we wake up in the morning we never know what we are going to face that day. We might make our plans (and if you know me, I do like making plans!), but life is filled with its twists and turns—i.e. all kinds of things that can throw our plans off course.   Even just a change in the weather can cause a change in our plans.   In the ...