Thank God for Mothers-in-Law
June 28, 2010
By Rev. Ed Hird
How often do we celebrate the gift of our mothers-in-law? Marriage counselors tell us that there are three primary areas of stress in marriages: money, marital intimacy, and in-laws. Mother-in-law jokes tend to express the ambivalent nature of this most important relationship. I would like to state uncategorically that I have been blessed with the gift of the mother-in-law that God gave me. It has been ten years now since Vera went home to heaven, but her impact is still deeply felt.
My mother-in-law found me before my wife did. By God-incidence, we met each other at a 1974 weekend conference. She was quite impressed with me, despite my 1970’s longish hair and embroidered overalls. My mother-in-law really enjoyed the movie ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, and could sing ‘Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match’ by heart. Unfortunately, when my future mother-law/matchmatcher commended me to my future wife, the assessment was not mutual. My wife and I had been in the same High School for Grade 12. We all know what familiarity can breed. My wife did remember however that even in Grade 12, I had nice eyes.
When I reconnected with my future wife at UBC in 1975, I also rediscovered my future mother-in-law. I was most impressed by the warm hospitality that I always felt in my future mother-in-law’s home. Some people make you feel stressed by how they fuss over you as a guest. With my mother-in-law, it all felt very natural and relaxed. She had that gift of making one feel right at home.
When I lost my voice for 18 months back in 1980, my mother-in-law was one of the people who stood with me in practical and prayerful ways. She introduced me to the Order of St. Luke the Physician where I learned how to combine the dual benefits of medicine and prayer. When I am tempted to be cynical about the power of prayer, I think of my mother-in-law who never gave up praying for seemingly hopeless situations. Once when my wife’s sister was running from the Lord, my mother-in-law recruited people from all around the world to pray without ceasing for her daughter. As a result of that passionate prayer, the prodigal daughter ‘returned home’ and became a Christ-like example to other seekers. My mother-in-law symbolizes the call to ‘never, never give up.’
“Like mother, like daughter” goes the familiar saying. Thirty-three years into my marriage, I am now more aware than ever how much a mother influences her daughter. I have counseled various women whose experiences with their mothers have left them emotionally crippled and unable to share love. I give thanks to God that my mother-in-law raised my wife in an atmosphere of love and caring. I know that without that foundational nurturing, my last thirty-three years of marriage would have been a very different experience indeed. I am grateful to be married to a loving wife and mother who learned mother-love from someone who really cares.
My mother-in-law has had some real setbacks in her life over the years, but she never let it defeat her. She always bounced back. Family and faith mean the world to her. Day in and day out, she was always looking for ways to comfort and encourage other people, both young and old. Even on her hospital bed near the end of her life, she was still counselling people. Rather than moaning about her own problems, she was remarkably other-centered, truly loving her neighbours as herself in a very Christ-like way.
One of her greatest contributions in my life has been her encouraging my involvement in the Christian Ashram retreat movement http://www.christianashram.org . For 36 years now, I have attended the BC Christian Ashram each summer spending time learning how to be a healthier and more whole person. I can honestly say that the renewal that I have experienced in the 36 Christian Ashram retreats that I have attended have made me more peaceful, more forgiving, and more restful. I would commend this upcoming BC Christian Ashram Retreat to anyone who is really seeking.
What more can I say except ‘thank you’ for my irreplaceable mother-in-law? My prayer for those married couples reading this article is that we will take time to express our gratitude to our mothers-in-law. Life is shorter than we think.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved
June 28, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
When Alexander Fleming’s picture turned up on the front cover of Time magazine, the byword stated “His penicillin will save more lives than war can spend”. A vivid example of this ‘miracle’ was the usage of penicillin on D-Day to save 3,000 on Normandy Beach from deadly gangrene. Some researchers consider penicillin to be one of the key top-secret weapons that helped the Allies win World War II.
It is hard for our modern generation to fully appreciate that before penicillin, even an infected pinprick or a tiny cut might be lethal. Hospitals were full of people with easily caught infections raging out of control. Children died regularly from scarlet fever, from infections of the bones, throat, stomach, or brain. It is no exaggeration to say that many of you reading this article would not be here today if it weren’t for the miracle of antibiotics touching you and your extended family.
In 1881, Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire in the lowlands of southwestern Scotland. A playground accident smashed the 
bridge of his nose and left him looking like a battered boxer. Andre Maurois said that Fleming had those qualities which many attribute to the Scots: a capacity for hard and sustained work, a combative spirit which refuses to admit defeat, a steadfastness and loyalty which creates respect and affection, and a true humility which protects against pretentiousness and pride.
Affectionately called Little Flem, his gift of silence appeared to be inexhaustible. One colleague said that Fleming ‘could be more eloquently silent than any man I have ever known.’ His capacity for silence was only matched by his capacity for waiting – and for hanging on, an attribute that greatly helped him in his penicillin adventure.
The body’s fight with infection was Fleming’s abiding interest. One of Fleming’s first breakthroughs was in the discovery of lysozyme, a natural antiseptic contained in human tears and saliva. Fleming’s method of collecting lysozyme was to recruit a passing student or laboratory boy and drop lemon juice in his eye! Eventually Fleming switched to the use of egg white which has a stronger 
concentration of lysozyme.
Lysozyme, unfortunately, ended up being an embarrassment to Fleming because it proved useless in killing harmful diseases. As a result, his fellow colleagues mostly treated Fleming’s later penicillin discovery as if it were another laboratory dead-end. Alexander Fleming always said, ‘We shall hear more about lysozyme one day’. With thousands of scientific papers now written about it, the Russians use lysozyme for preserving caviar; doctors add lysozyme to cow-milk to reproduce the component structure of human milk, as well as for the treatment of eye and intestinal infections.
Fleming, being a ‘packrat’, never liked to throw anything away. One day, Fleming noticed a blue mould growing on one of his unwashed petri dishes. He seized the moment and changed the world forever. From that moment, Fleming became obsessed with penicillin mould, even using his friends’ moldy old shoes. Fleming showed amazing ingenuity in his makeshift creation of the first penicillin ‘factory’, employing devices like oilcans, biscuit tins, dustbins, bedpans, milk churns, and bookracks!
For twelve long years after his 1928 discovery of penicillin, Fleming faced skeptical indifference. Penicillin was a medical Cinderella that no one wanted to dance with. ‘The man of genius’, writes Lord Beaverbrook, ‘ is often an egotist. When, as sometimes happens, he is simple and retiring, the world is inclined to underestimate his gifts…’
In 1937 Howard Florey and Ernst Chain of Oxford purified Fleming’s lysozyme. From there, they purified Fleming’s penicillin, making it stable, concentrated, and more useful.
When Alexander Fleming turned up in Oxford, Chain was taken completely by surprise. He had thought that Fleming was dead! Fleming generously said of the two,‘We all owe a lot to Florey, Chain and their co-workers. They did not initiate penicillin but they put it on the map as an effective drug.’
By freeze-drying it at a low temperature with a neutral pH, Chain and Florey were able to purify penicillin to become a thousand times more powerful than Fleming’s original mold. Once completely purified, penicillin became a million times stronger than at first!
By one biographer’s account, Fleming was given 25 honorary degrees, 26 medals, 18 prizes, 13 decorations, the freedom of 15 cities and boroughs, and honorary membership in 89 academies and societies. Both Florey and Fleming were knighted in 1944, and in 1945 Fleming, Florey and Chain were jointly give
n the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Medical centers, research institutes, and even a moon crater were named in honour of the beloved ‘father’ of penicillin. It meant a lot to Fleming as a Scot when he was elected as Rector of Edinburgh University in 1951. When Fleming received an ovation at a Spanish bullfight, 20,000 fans broke out into mass hysteria. The famous Spanish scientist Don Gregorio Maranon said of Fleming that ‘God selected him to carry out the greatest miracle which humanity has ever seen’.
Yet despite all the honours showered on Fleming, fame didn’t spoil him. He remained a simple humble man, not even bothering to patent penicillin for personal profit. When Fleming was asked to what he attributed his success, he said: ‘I can only suppose that God wanted penicillin, and that this was his reason for creating Alexander Fleming.’
Countless millions have been saved physically through Fleming’s sacrificial work on penicillin. Countless millions have been saved spiritually through Jesus’ sacrificial work on the cross. When is the last time that we thanked God for such amazing acts of generosity?
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future
June 28, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
Like many Canadians, Alexander Graham Bell moved to the United States to get his big break, but always longed to return to the beauty and peace of Canada. Both Alexander’s mom and wife had serious hearing impairments, a challenge that directly aided Alexander in his development of the first workable telephone. It was while Alexander served as a teacher of the hearing-impaired that he began to really understand the fundamental principles of communication and speech.
One of Bell’s most famous pupils was Helen Keller who came to him as a child unable to see, hear or speak. Helen Keller later said of Bell that he dedicated his life to the penetration of that ‘inhuman silence that separates and estranges.’ Dedicating her autobiography to Bell, she said: ‘You have always shown a father’s joy in my success and a father’s tenderness when things have not gone right.’
Like many millions of Canadians, Alexander 
Graham Bell was not born in Canada. Rather his family fled to Canada after the tuberculosis deaths of their two other sons in Edinburgh, Scotland. They naively believed that the pure air of Canada would save the life of Alexander who was also afflicted with tuberculosis. While Alexander did live until age 75, he was never that well and often suffered from severe headaches. But Alexander never let his problems hold him back from being creative.
Alexander had a pioneering mind and great vision. He defined an inventor as someone “who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees; he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea.” “We should not keep going forever”, said Alexander, “on the public road, going only where others have gone. We should leave the beaten track occasionally and enter the woods. Every time you do that, you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before.”
While Alexander became famous from his invention of the first workable telephone, his inventive genius reached much farther. He was the first in North America to show how x-rays could be used to treat cancers inside the body. He invented a probe that discovered where bullets were lodged inside people.
Through creative experimenting with kites, he built the first successful airplane in the British Empire. His Canadian airplane flew almost a kilometre at 64 kilometres per hour on February 23rd, 1909 at Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton. Alexander’s hydrofoil built in 1915 reached speeds of 70 mph (112 kph).
After the death of his son from weak lungs, Alexander invented the first respirator. To assist shipwrecked sailors, he created a machine that turned the moisture in air into drinking water. His endless inventions also included the first practical phonograph, the first flat-disk record, an iceberg-locating 
device, a water purifier that removed salt from seawater, an air conditioner, and an audiometer to test people’s hearing.
But it was Bell’s invention of the telephone that caused the greatest controversy. Some wrote Bell off as a mad scientist who was challenging the laws of nature. Others tried to argue that telephones were somehow of the devil and against the bible. There were widespread fears that telephones would spread disease and even insanity over the telephone wires. During an 18-year period, Bell faced and won over 600 lawsuits challenging his telephone patent.
The first business use of the telephone began in 1877. By 1888, there were over 150,000 users in North America. The cost of having a phone installed in 1888 was $10, the equivalent of a whole year’s wage for a servant. As of 2010, there are literally hundred of millions who might find it hard to imagine life without a phone.
When Bell’s body was buried in 1922 on top of a Cape Breton Island mountain, every telephone in North America observed a minute’s silence. 
Thomas Edison, a rival and friend, said at that time: ‘My late friend Alexander Graham Bell, whose world-famed invention annihilated time and space, and brought the human family in closer touch.’
The word ‘telephone’ means ‘sound over a long distance’. Bell brought good news to many through a physical device. May God use each of us as pioneers to bring the sound of good news throughout the world.
The Reverend Ed Hird
Rector, St. Simon’s Church, North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….
June 28, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
I had no idea that Thomas Edison’s family were United Empire Loyalists, refugees fleeing to Canada in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War. Thomas’ grandfather Samuel Sr. even took part in the Canadian conquest of Detroit during the war of 1812. But frustrated with inequalities in Canada, his son Samuel Jr. joined in Mayor William Lyon Mackenzie’s 1837 unsuccessful plot to liberate Toronto from Canada. As Samuel Edison Jr. fled with his family to Ohio, Canada lost one of the world’s greatest inventors: Thomas Alva Edison.
In talking to many people, I have not met one yet who hasn’t heard of Thomas Edison. But few of us have realized just how prolific an inventor Edison really was, with 1,069 different inventions patented! Edison of course is best known for the creation of the world’s first usable lightbulb. Realizing that a lightbulb needed a power source, he went on to create the world’s first electrical power station, a revolutionary act that transformed modern technology, and created ten of millions of jobs. Henry Ford once commented: ‘To find a man who has not benefited by Edison and who is not in debt to him, it would be necessary to go deep into the jungle.’
It was also interesting to discover that his own father and his teachers saw this unique genius as unintelligent. He irritated his superiors by continually asking questions. He also had trouble hearing which made learning difficult in school. Years later, Thomas said, ‘My father thought I was stupid, and I almost decided I must be a dunce’. Thomas was afraid to tell his mother how difficult school was, in case she too would lose her confidence in him. His mother 
Nancy, who always stood up for him, eventually pulled him out and home-schooled him herself. Edison later said: ‘My mother was the making of me; she let me follow my bent’. At one particularly low point, he realized that his mother was ‘the most enthusiastic champion a boy ever had.’ At age 12, he began selling newspapers and snacks from 6am-11pm to railway passengers. During his spare moments, he used to conduct chemistry experiments in the baggage cars until one day he was fired for setting the train car on fire. As the last of seven children, Thomas was always a kid at heart, seeing life as one big experiment.
Edison’s next job as a telegrapher allowed him to create his first invention, an automatic telegraph dispatcher that allowed him to work on his experiments and sleep the rest of the time. His invention worked like clockwork until one day sleepy Edison was fired for not forwarding an unusual message warning of a narrowly-averted head-on train collision.
Thomas Edison changed his world before he even reached age 40. His success in the fields of telegraph, telephone, phonograph, and the electric light were achieved between the ages of 20 to 39. He continued inventing right up until his death at age 85. Edison aimed to produce one minor invention every ten days and one major one every six months. Inventing for Edison was as natural as breathing.
One co-worker said of Edison that ‘His genius for sleep equaled his genius for invention. He 
could go to sleep anywhere, any time on anything.’ Always a night bird, Edison would often start work at nightfall, break for ‘lunch’ at midnight, and then go until daybreak. Because Edison believed that changing clothes was bad for creativity, he often slept fully clothed. His wife Mary was so irritated by this habit that she often encouraged him to sleep elsewhere. Sadly time for his wife and children often became lost in his passion for creativity and invention.
Edison created and patented both the gramophone, the ancestor of our modern CD and Tape Player, as well as the Kinetoscope, the ancestor of movie cameras. As well as creating the world’s first Movie Studio in New Jersey, he indirectly created the Hollywood film industry by ‘driving’ his competitors right across the country in their efforts to avoid Edison’s subpoenas and court orders. Edison struggled all his life with lawsuits over people stealing or imitating his inventions. But it never stopped Edison’s creativity in bringing new light to age-old technological problems.
As Edison brought physical light, so Jesus 
brings spiritual light to the darkness and confusion that we all face on a daily basis. Jesus said: ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’ As you are reading this article, it may be very dark outside, but you are directly benefiting from Edison’s enlightening breakthrough with workable light bulbs. My prayer is that in the same way that each of us benefit from the light that Edison has brought into our lives, so too we may be willing to benefit from the light that Jesus is waiting to bring into our lives.
The Reverend Ed Hird
Rector, St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’
http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com
p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99CDN/USD.
-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada
You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
Strengthening Weak Knees
June 28, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
edhird
