Why a Hedgehog on our Homepage?Well, we recently discovered that the Harris Family Coat of Arms both from England and from Ireland curiously has three hedgehogs on it. See below. 
It was a fun discovery. At my age, I am more interested in family roots and, being the sentimental person that I am, found some significant meaning in it for our family and ministry. For what it's worth: The chevron design makes reference to the roof of a house and thus the importance of the home and the family. It represents protection and faithful service. Blue is the color of strength and loyalty. Gold is the color of generosity. These are important qualities for any committed Christian and especially a missionary family. The Harris Family motto is: Everywhere to remember one's own country. As missionaries, it is not always easy, especially for the children, to truly sense what country is their own, because they become integrated in many ways in the country in which God has called them to serve. One important thing to remember because of this is that, as Christians, this world is not our home, that we have a heavenly home which is more important than our earthly home. (Eph. 2:19; Phil. 3:20; Heb. 11:10; 12:22) The Hedgehog is sometimes the symbol of self-preservation. However, an ancient Greek poet seemed see the hedgehog as a symbol of single vision. Here is an excerpt from a book written in 1953 by Isaiah Berlin (published by Simon and Schuster) called "The Hedgehog and the Fox." "There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Moličre, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzak, Joyce are foxes. " 
I liked the hedgehog idea of having one single life focus, one overriding purpose. As Christians we must be single-minded, and not let anything distract us from our single most important goal of glorifying God through the advancement of His Church on this earth. The hedgehog can be found all over Europe! We have had friendly hedgehogs visit us in all the houses that we have lived in in Europe. They do indeed live and move around under the hedges. This makes be think about the parable that Jesus told his disciples, where the King is preparing a banquet for the marriage of his son. He asks his servants to invite everyone in the city to the banquet. When the servants some back, saying that there is still more room (Good news for us all!), the King says, Go into the country and invite everybody, using the words, "go to the highways and along the hedges!" And in the hedges are those "single minded" hedgehogs. Check out this website. Us Harrises are like the hedgehogs in Europe, with heaven on our minds, the proclamation of the Good News to people of this lost continent. (Yes, I know it's a bit corny, but ... doesn't take much to get me excited!)
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