More than Just Chocolate…
March 10, 2012
By Rev Ed Hird
Once every year, billions of people around the world pause to remember the mystery of Easter. Most people love Easter: bunnies, chocolate, eggs, bonnets, lilies, flower crosses, and joyful singing. In the air, you can sense victory and resurrection and new life. No wonder that churches have many visitors on Easter Sunday.
For sixty-six years, the St. Simon’s NV family has been celebrating Easter. I have always enjoyed Easter, especially for the chocolate. Just like Christmas, Easter has its food connection and its spiritual connection. Most people love to eat. Easter family gatherings invariably involve lots of delicious food, especially those wonderful hot cross buns.
Good Friday is a traditional fast day where many choose not to eat in order to remember Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins. Easter Sunday is a traditional feast day where families celebrate with delicious feasts. Without Good Friday, Easter Sunday makes no sense. Without Easter Sunday, Good Friday is just a terrible tragedy. Good Friday shows that God can turn everything that is against us to our advantage. God transformed Good Friday (the most evil day in history) into Easter Sunday (the most beautiful day in history).
Many of us steer clear of Good Friday because it reminds us of death, of pain, and of our own personal mortality. Sometimes we may question: what on earth is Good about Good Friday? What’s so good about someone going through the worst suffering and most excruciating death ever imagined? Good Friday seems too morbid, too deadly, too bloody.
Modern medical science is wonderful in the way that it can prolong life that would often otherwise be over. But medicine can only postpone the inevitable facing all of us. We are mortals here on earth. In my mid-teen period, I lost sight of the power of Easter, and concluded that there was no life after death. Death was final, and that was the end of it. Nothing was waiting for me but the grave. What was it all about, I wondered? Was life really worth the effort? I began to fear the power of death and the meaninglessness and emptiness of life. I even secretly wondered if life itself was worth living.
In the midst of my teenage self-doubt, I still loved Easter, but I didn’t get it. The 
flowers, the food, the fun and even Easter worship were enjoyable, but somehow I missed the message. It is funny how you can celebrate something that you grow up with, and yet the real meaning can be missed. When the penny finally dropped, when the light came on, it was like waking up from the dead. I finally understood that Jesus solved the unsolvable death problem, and that by faith in him, the future is bright and unstoppable.
My prayer for those of you who love the Easter season is that you may realize that at the end of the day, love is stronger than death, and love has the final word.
Rev. Ed Hird, Rector
St Simon’s North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-an article for the April 2012 Deep Cove Crier
-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-mailed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/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
Joy to the World!
December 9, 2010
By Reverend Ed Hird
“Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat” Who can think of Christmas without the joy of Christmas carols? Everyone wants joy at Christmas. Everyone wants to be loved, to be cared for, to be remembered. There is no lonelier time of the year than Christmas spent alone. Sometimes we try too hard to be joyful at Christmas. I usually find that the harder I try to be happy, the more self-obsessed and miserable I become.
‘Joy to the World!’ Why is Christmas often the high holiday for alcoholics and the chemically dependent? Perhaps because people feel this ‘moral burden’ at Christmas to be joyful at all cost. Joy for many is like the elusive butterfly that is just out of reach. They can almost grab it and suddenly it is gone again. All the Christmas presents, all the eggnog, all the tinsel, and all the Christmas lights just don’t seem to be able to produce that strange phenomenon of joy.
‘Joy to the World!’ Joy is like being tickled. In the same way that you can’t tickle yourself, you can’t ‘pull up your bootstraps’ and conjure up joy. Joy can’t be forced, manipulated, controlled, psyched up, or packaged. Joy is a gift, a free gift, an overwhelming gift from the most generous giver in the Universe. Joy is the true heart of Christmas because Christmas is both about the joy of 
giving and the giving of joy.
‘Joy to the World!’ Have you ever noticed how you can’t fake laughter? Laughter too is a gift, a gift of joy, a gift of freedom. Can you imagine how sad a Christmas Dinner would be without laughter? Many of us have such a stern view of Jesus that we can’t imagine him laughing or joyful. Yet Jesus was at his best when he hung out at parties with some of the most unexpected people. We forget that Jesus, being Jewish, made use of Jewish humour and hyperbole to shock people into thinking. Can you imagine how racy Jesus’ story was about the prodigal Jewish son who ended up working for a pig farmer? And yet he used that now famous story in Luke Chapter 15 to remind us that no matter how messed up we become, we can always come home to the Father’s arms. That’s the true joy of Christmas.
‘Joy to the World!’ Joy and sorrow are neurologically linked in a way that few of us expect. How true it is that ‘those who sow with tears shall reap with songs of joy’. Unless we grieve the losses of life, true joy never comes. Alcohol and drugs merely postpone our doing the hard grief-work that awaits each of us. Is it a coincidence that the symbol of drama is the twin masks of Greek comedy and tragedy? How true it is that ‘weeping may last for a night but joy comes in the morning’. The price of really enjoying this Christmas may be paying the price of grieving the loss of our parents in death, our ex-spouse in divorce, or our children in heartbreak.
‘Joy to the World!’ Shakespeare in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ said: ‘frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life’. The ancient Proverbs said ‘A merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones’. More and more scientists are discovering that joy and laughter are scientifically good for you. Joy and laughter strengthen our immunity systems, reduce our stress 
levels, and alleviate chronic pain.
‘Joy to the World!’ Isaac Watts back in 1719 wrote the unforgettable Christmas Carol ‘Joy to the World! The Lord is come: Let earth receive our King’. This Christmas, let joy fill our hearts, let the King fill our lives, let the baby Jesus fill our homes. This Christmas ‘let every heart prepare him room’. Joy to you and your families this Christmas!
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
-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 $9.99 CDN/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
Louis Riel’s Parting Messages to Humanity
December 9, 2010
“INTERVIEW WITH RIEL”
(Regina Leader Newspaper, Saskatchewan,Nov 19th 1885 )
by Mary MacFadyen McLean (my great grandmother reporter)
“His parting Messages to Mankind”
“The reporter of the Leader having received the orders of the proprietor to see Riel before his death and have an interview with him, waited on Captain Deane who was suffering from a severe accident, and who said he would be most happy to oblige the LEADER, but he doubted if he could do so were he in charge, but his superior officer was there, and he had no authority to act without his orders.
“Who is he?” asked the reporter.
“Col. Irvine.”
“Reporter: “I fear Col. Irvine is not friendly to the LEADER, which, in the public interest has felt bound to criticize him. However I must not enlarge on that head with you. My marching orders were to ‘See Riel,’ whom it was understood desired to see the Reporter of the LEADER with whom during his trial he frequently communicated.” Believing it useless to wait on the gallant Col, I repaired to the Queen City of the plains and went to my lodgings where I had the ‘Materials’ with which I had long been armed in preparation for this crisis. When first the officer in command of the LEADER said ‘An interview must be had with Riel if you have to outwit the whole police force of the North-West,’ I resolved various schemes. I reflected what great things had been done by means of the fair sex, and I thought, suppose I enlist on my side the fair ‘Saphronica’ and get her to put the ‘Comthethes’ on ‘Irvine’s susceptible fancy, and let her represent the LEADER. Saphronica was willing. A young lady of undoubted charms and resolute will, she essayed the officer in command, and, strange to say, his sense of duty or his fears of the Government, were stronger than his gallantry and Saphronica utterly failed to corrupt the guard. But on this, the Editor in chief frowned. At last I hit on a plan of my own. Accordingly on the evening of my refusal by Deane, I repaired to my lodgings, put on a soutaine (liturgical term for a robe) armed my chin with a beard, put on a broad brimmed wide awake, 
and stood Mr. Bienveillee the ancien confesseur of the doomed Riel. I hung at my bosom an enormous silver crucifix and now, speaking French, presented myself at the Barracks. The guard made no difficulty, and I believe they took me for Pere Andre. Entered his cell, I looked round and saw that the policeman had moved away from the grill. I bent down, told Riel I was a LEADER reporter in the guise of a pretre, and had come to give his last message to the world. He held out his left hand and touching it with his right, said: “Tick! Tick! Tick! I hear the telegraph, ah ca finira, “quick, I said, have you anything to say? I have brought pencil and paper — Speak”. Riel: “When I first saw you on the trial, I loved you.”
Messages: “I wish to send messages to all. To Lemieux, Fitzpatrick, Greenshields. I do not forget them — They are entitled to my reconnaissance. Ah!” he cried, apostrophizing them, “You were right to plead insanity, for assuredly all those days in which I have badly observed the Commandments of God were passed in insanity (passé dans la folie). Every day in which I have neglected to prepare myself to die, was a day of mental alienation. I who believe in the power of the Catholic priests to forgive sins, I have much need to confess myself according as Jesus Christ has said: “Whose sins you remit, they are remitted.”
Death: “Here he stopped and looked in his peculiar way and said: “Death comes right to 
meet one. He does not conceal himself. I have only to look straight before me in order to see him clearly. I march to the end of my days. Formerly I saw him afar. (O rather ‘her’ for he spoke him in French). It seems to me, however, that he walks no more slowly. He runs. He regards me. Alas! He precipitates himself upon me. My God!” he cried, “will he arrive before I am ready to present myself before you. O my God! Arrest it! By the grace, the influence, the power, the mercy divine of Jesus Christ. Conduct him in another direction in virtue of the prayers of Marie Immaculate. Separate me from death by the force the intercession of St Joseph has the privilege of exercise on your heart, O my God! Exempt me lovingly by Jesus, Marie, and Joseph, from the violent and ignominious death of the gallows, to which I am condemned.
“Honorables Langevin, Caron, Chapleau, I want to send them a message, let them not be offended if a man condemned to death dares to address them. Whatever affairs hang on you, don’t forget, ‘What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?’
“Honorable Messrs. Blake and Mackenzie, I want to send them a message. For fifteen years you have often named me, and you have made resound the echoes of your glorious province, in striking on my name as one 
strikes on a tocsin. I thank you for having contributed to give me some celebrity. Nobly take from me advice nobody else will dare to give you. Prepare yourself each day to appear before your God.
“The Vice-Regal throne is occupied with magnificence. He who occupies it is brilliant, and my eyes cannot fix on him without being blinded. Illustrious personages the qualities with which you are endowed are excellent. For that reason, men say ‘Your Excellency’. If the voice of a man condemned to death will not appear impertinent to you: it vibrates at the bottom of the cells of Regina to say to you: Excellencies, you also do not fail to hold yourself in readiness for death, to make a good death, prepare yourself for death!
Sir John Macdonald! I send you a message. I have not had the honour to know you personally. Permit me nevertheless to address you a useful word. Having to prepare 
myself for death, I give myself to meditation and prayer. Excuse me Sir John. Do not leave yourself completely carried away by the glories of power. In the midst of your great and noble occupations, take every day a few moments at least for devotion and prayer and prepare yourself for death.
“Honorable and noble friends! Laurier, Laflamme, Lachapelle, Desjardins, Taillon, Beaubien, Trudel, Prud’homme, I bid you adieu. I demand of God to send you the visit of Death only when you shall have long time desired it, and that you may join those who have transformed death into joy, into deliverance and triumph.
“Honorable Joseph Dubuc, Alphonse, C. Lariviere, Marc. A. Girard, Joseph Royal, Hon. John Norquay, Gov. Edgar Dewdney, Col. Irvine, Captain Deane, I would invite them to think how they would feel if they had only one week to live. Life here below is only the preparation for another. You are good Christians, think of eternity. Do not omit to prepare yourself for death.
“O My God! How is it death has become my sweetheart with the horror I feel towards her? And how can she seek me with an attention proportioned to the repugnance she inspires? O Death, the Son of God has triumphed over your terrors! O Death I would make of thee a good death!
“Elzear de la Gimodiere! Roger Goulet, and you whom I regard as a relative Irene Kerouak, prepare yourself for death. I pray God to prolong your days, Louis Schmidt, I ask of the good God to enable you to come to a happy old age. Meanwhile prepare yourself for death. Listen to the disinterested advice of one condemned. We have been placed in this world only for the purpose of probation.
“And you whom I admire and respect, Glorious Major General Middleton, you were kind to me, you treated me nobly. Pray see in my words the desire to be as little disagreeable as possible. Life has been smiling and fortunate for you. General, if there is one thing I have appreciated more than being your prisoner of war, it is that you chose as my guard Captain Young, one of the most brave and polite officers of the army. Captain Young, Be not surprised if I send you a message through the LEADER newspaper which I understand with reconnaissance has not called out against me, prepare yourself all your days. Death also disquiets himself about you. Do not sleep on watch. Be over well on your guard.
MESSAGES TO FATHER CHINUIQUY
“And you whom death spares and does not dare to approach and you whom I cannot forget, Ancien Preacher of Temperance, Chinuiquy, your hairs are white, God who has made them white slowly, wishes to make your heart white right away (tout d’un coup). O be not angry at the disinterested voice of a man who has never spoken to you, to whom you have never given pain, unless it be in having abandoned regrettably the amiable religion of your fathers. The grace of Marie waits for you. Please come.
The prisoner paused, and in the pause, one heard the skirr of the spurred heel of the Mounted Policeman and the neighing of one of the horses in the stables hard by, and I said: “Is this all? Have you no more to say?”
“No more”, replied Riel. “Father Andre has been here. He has told me there is no hope, that he has had a letter from my good friend Bishop Grandin. I have taken the sacraments. I am prepared. But yet the Spirit tells me, told me last night that I should yet rule a vast country, the North West, with power derived direct from heaven, look!” and he pointed to the vein in his left arm, there the spirit speaks, Riel will not die until he has accomplished his mission and –
He was about to make a speech and I left him with some sympathy and no little sadness. I felt that I had been in the presence of a man of genius manque, of a man who, had he been gifted with judgement, might have accomplished much; of one, who, had he been destitute of cruelty might even command esteem, and as I rode over the 
bridge and looked down on the frosty creek, and cast my eye towards the Government House where happy people were perhaps at dinner at that hour, I said to myself: “Why did he murder Scott? Why did he seek to wake up the bloody and nameless horrors of an Indian massacre? Why did he seek the blood of McKay and his fellow peacemakers? Unhappy man there is nothing for it. You must die on Monday.”
Here as I passed near the trail going northwest, the well known voice of a home-returning farmer saying ‘Good night’ woke me from my reverie. In twenty minutes, I was seated at dinner. I joined in the laugh and the joke, so passing are our most solemn impressions, so light the effect of actual tragedy. Our emotions are the penumbras of rapid transitions of circumstances and vanishing associations and like clouds, we take the hue of the moment, and are shaped by the breeze that bloweth where it listeth.”
Mary MacFadyen McLean, maternal great-grandmother of:
The Reverend Ed Hird
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 $9.99 CDN/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
Walking the Line with Johnny Cash
September 14, 2010
By Rev. Ed Hird
During Johnny Cash’s nearly fifty years of music, he sold over ninety million albums. He learned to sing while picking cotton as an impoverished sharecropper’s son in Kingsland, Arkansas.
Cash recorded more than 1,500 songs including well-known hits like ‘A Boy named Sue’, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘Ring of Fire.’ Johnny Cash is the only musician who has ever been threefold-inducted into the Songwriter’s, Country Music, and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame.”
More than 100 other recording artists and groups have recorded Cash’s song “I Walk the Line.” Cash commented: “I wrote ‘I walk the Line’ when I was on the road in Texas in 1956, having a hard time resisting the temptation to be unfaithful to my wife back in Memphis”: ‘I keep a close watch on this heart of mine. I keep my eyes wide open all the time. I keep the ends out for the tie that binds. Because you’re mine, I walk the line.’
Cash’s life was often fraught with tragedy and heartbreak. “After my brother Jack’s death, said Johnny, “I felt like I’d died, too. I just didn’t feel alive. I was terribly lonely without him. I had no other friend.” Like his father before him, Johnny struggled for many years with addiction issues. His father was never able to tell his children that he loved them.
Johnny Cash’s first marriage ran aground in the midst of workaholism and pill-popping. 
In Cash’ autobiography, he comments: “Touring and drugs were what I did, with the effort involved in drugs mounting steadily as time went by.” Amphetamines keep him going without sleep, and barbiturates and alcohol knocked him out. Cash comments: “I was in and out of jails, hospitals, and car wrecks. I was a walking vision of death, and that’s exactly how I felt. I was scraping the filthy bottom of the barrel of life.”
He knew that he had wasted his life and drifted far from God. In desperation, Cash decided to end his life in 1967 by crawling deep into the inner recesses of Nickajack Cave on the Tennessee River. There in pitch darkness he met God and then miraculously was able to crawl to the opening of the cave. There waiting for him was his future wife June Carter and his mother. That was Cash’s turning point in getting serious about battling his addiction.
Cash stayed free of drugs until attacked in 1981 by an ostrich that ripped his stomach open and broke several ribs. While in hospital, he became re-addicted to painkillers. In 1983, his family and friends
did an intervention, which included Cash’s going to the Betty Ford Clinic. Cash comments: “I’m still absolutely convinced that the intervention was the hand of God working in my life, telling me that I still had a long way to go, a lot left to do. But first I had to humble myself before God.”
In the midst of great trauma, Cash found that spiritual music helped bring him back from the despair of his addictions. “Wherever I go, I can start singing one of them and immediately begin to feel peace settle over me as God’s grace flows in. They’re powerful, those songs. At times they’ve been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.” Cash began to find great strength in reading the bible and in prayer. He learned to stop hating himself, and to forgive himself and others.
During this time, Billy Graham became a 
personal friend and mentor. Billy Graham “was interested, but never judgmental…I’ve always been able to share my secrets and problems with Billy, and I’ve benefited greatly from his support and advice. He’s never pressed me when I’ve been in trouble; he’s waited for me to reveal myself, and then he’s helped me as much as he can.”
I thank God for the late Johnny Cash’s recovery from serious addiction, and pray that all of us will have the courage to change the things that can be changed.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
- previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
-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 $9.99 CDN/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
Golfing with my Undertaker
September 13, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
Golf is now over 500 years old, having been played officially throughout Scotland since 1502. Most of the earliest references to golf were about attempts to ban it or to condemn the golfers. On 6th March 1457 in Edinburgh, King James II banned ‘ye golf’ because it was more popular than archery.
As a teenager, I golfed religiously three times a week at Langara Golf Course in Vancouver. To prove my dedication, I even sometimes golfed in the snow. I also used to caddy for my father, which was a great way to spend quality time with him.
Years later, my golf game has its moments of glory, as well as many reminders of how far I have fallen. I took part in a golfing tournament a while ago with forty undertakers and one hundred and ten clergy. On the second hole of the tournament, I sunk a forty-five-foot putt. Delusions of being the next PGA superstar filled my mind until I missed a four-foot putt on the very next hole. Golf can be very humbling, and is therefore good for the soul, or so they tell me.
In the twenty-eight years since I was ordained, I have taken many funerals. Virtually every funeral involves a funeral director, sometimes called a family services counselor. I have found them to be very personal, decent individuals. It was not until I started golfing with funeral directors that I really came to know them personally. Over the eighteen holes, the pastors and undertakers shared the inevitable victories and defeats. It really helped us realize how much we had in common, though the funeral directors are usually better golfers.
Both funeral directors and clergy are usually called upon in times of sorrow and death. While some people try to do their own services, most Canadians still look to professionals to help them through this most difficult of times. Both pastors and undertakers are often misunderstood. People sometimes don’t realize that undertakers and clergy are ordinary human beings much like themselves. I remember once when a Deep Cove resident was shocked to see me shopping at Safeway, because they didn’t think that clergy actually shopped.
One of the privileges of serving for twenty-three years has been to walk with North Shore families and individuals through the key transitions of life: birth, marriage, and death. With one local family, I had the privilege of burying four members. Families during funerals will open up and share their hearts in ways that you rarely otherwise see.
Death is the great leveler. No matter how we try to avoid it and deny it, death catches up with every family. We can put it off for a while through healthy eating and exercising, but sooner or later we all face the grim reaper.
Both funeral directors and clergy can make a big difference in helping families navigate these painful waters. I am grateful that I can remind grieving people that there is a bridge over troubled waters, that Jesus made a way and prepared a resting place for them. I am grateful that death does not have the final say.
My prayer for those reading this article is that each of us will find that bridge over troubled waters.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
- previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
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 $9.99 CDN/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
Say No to Fear
August 18, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird 
If you had just a few months to live, what would you most want to say to friends? What would have priority and what would become secondary? The famous Apostle Paul knew that he was about to have his head chopped off by the crazed Roman Emperor Nero. So he wrote his final letter, known as Second Timothy, to his key assistant, Timothy. Second Timothy was really Paul’s last will and testament.
Paul had been in jail many times for the faith. It was his favorite place to write letters like his unforgettable letters to the Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon. If Paul had not been sent to jail so often, half the New Testament would likely never have been written. In the past Paul had always been let out of prison. But this time he knew that the only escape was death.
Have you ever lost a key leader and mentor who has helped you reach heights that you never thought you would reach? To lose such a person can bring deep feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Bishop Handley Moule of Durham, England, commented that “Timothy stood awfully lonely, yet awfully exposed, in face of a world of thronging sorrows. Well might he have been shaken to the root of his faith.”
Young Timothy was by nature an insecure, sickly and timid person, but Paul saw potential in Timothy far beyond his outward appearance. Paul had been closely associated with Timothy ever since he ‘discovered’ him in Lystra, Turkey, some fifteen years before.
Paul knew that it was time for the changing of the guard, the passing on of the baton of leadership. Paul was determined that Timothy not drop that baton in the midst of Emperor Nero’s onslaught.
You’ve probably heard the expression: “Rome burned while Nero fiddled”. Nero set Rome on fire in AD 64 as an urban renovation project, and blamed the early Christians as convenient scapegoats. The historian Tacitus commented that the early Christians “were killed by dogs by having the hides of beasts attached to them, or they were nailed to crosses or set aflame, and, when the daylight passed away, they were used as nighttime lamps. Nero gave his own gardens for this spectacle…”
Christianity was on the verge of extinction, and the dying Paul saw Timothy as the key to its very survival. The famous Dr. John Stott comments, “Greatness was being thrust upon Timothy, and like Moses and Jeremiah and a host of others before and after him, Timothy was exceedingly reluctant to accept it.”
Paul strengthened Timothy by reminding him how much he meant to him, and how often he prayed for him day and night. He also strengthened Timothy by reminding him of the faithful examples set by his grandma, Lois and his mother, Eunice. As Dr. John Stott put it, “good biographies never begin with their subject, but with his parents, and probably his grandparents as well.” Paul was saying to Timothy: “don’t lose touch with your roots”.
What do you know for sure if you see a turtle on a fencepost? The answer is that it didn’t get there itself. We are who we are, in large part because of people who have believed in us and invested in us. Many of us as Canadians have forgotten the remarkable spiritual heritage we have been given by our ancestors, our Loises and Eunices. I think of our Judeo-Christian heritage in Canada as like crabs hidden under the rocks at the seashore. Only when one uncovers the rocks does one discover the greatest riches of life just below the surface.
The dying Paul knew that Timothy had so much going for him. So he told him to fan into flame the wonderful God-given gift that had been given to him. It is so easy to let our gifts and abilities lie dormant, when we need to rekindle and stir up the smouldering flame.
Fear can cripple our future. So Paul said to Timothy: “God has not given you a spirit of timidity but of power and love and a sound mind.” Timidity, says Douglas Milne, is a chronic fear of people, suffering or responsibilities that paralyzes the will from giving effective leadership.
Paul is saying to Timothy, and to each of us: “Say no to fear. Don’t let anxiety crush your life. Live life free and unfettered.” At the heart of every addiction is the bondage to fear. My prayer for those reading this article is that the Great Physician will set each of us, like Timothy, free from fear, and fill us instead with the Spirit of power and love and a sound mind.
The Rev. Ed Hird
Rector, St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
-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 $9.99 CDN/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
Saying No to Abuse
July 22, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
It takes courage to say ‘No’. It takes courage to stand up against abuse. Over the years, I have met many people in abusive situations who have paid a great price to eventually extricate themselves from the vicious cycle of manipulation and recrimination.
Sexual and physical abuse, in particular, scars the victim deeply. Often the victims falsely blame themselves. Recovery from abuse involves breaking the conspiracy of silence and deception perpetrated by abusers. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, we are as sick as our secrets. Only the truth, however painful, can really set us free. Secrecy keeps us chained to our abusers.
Part of the cycle of abuse is that abusers are very skilled at blaming the victim. Many abuse victims internalize these false accusations and begin to blame themselves. Sexual abuse victims often carry a false sense of guilt and shame. Breaking false shame off victims can be very liberating. Sometimes scripture can help release people from such self-rejection: ‘You are already clean because of my word spoken to you’ (John 15:3) and ‘Do not call unclean that which God has made clean’ (Acts 10:15). All of us need to experience the cleansing stream of God’s Holy Spirit. All of us need to be washed with the water of the Word, removing our stains and blemishes (Ephesians 5:27). All of us need catharsis in our daily lives.
Abusers exercise ongoing control over their victims through fear and guilt. The heart of all addiction is the cycle of fear and guilt. Breaking the cycle of manipulation will release massive breakthrough in a person’s life. As the Good Book puts it, perfect love casts out all fear. Breaking the power of fear is critical to putting the abuse victim on a stable footing. Abusers are always destabilizing the victim’s environment, causing them to ‘walk on eggshells’. Abusers will often use ‘divide and conquer’ techniques that cuts the victim off from their natural support network.
God’s truth through Scripture can be most helpful here. It is not by accident that the phrase ‘Do not fear’ is used over 365 times in the Bible, at least once for every day of the year. As Timothy was once reminded, God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7) . God’s gift of ‘a sound mind’ is key to removing ‘stinking thinking’ and giving us instead peace that passes all understanding. God hasn’t given us a spirit that makes us a slave again to fear but rather has given us the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15). The key to breaking fear is realizing that in Jesus, we are adopted, we are chosen, we are accepted in the beloved. Nothing can cast us away from his loving arms.
Abusers specialize in condemning their victims as bad and unworthy of acceptance. The Good Book in contrast says that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Breaking the power of condemnation releases great joy into the lives of abuse victims. No longer do they need to falsely accuse themselves and beat themselves up. Instead they learn to accept themselves in Christ’s love. When the manipulative power of fear and condemnation is broken, victims can become victors in remarkable unexpected ways. Creativity becomes released. Healthy boundaries become re-established. Abusers lose their power to control and entrap others. Victims stop enabling the very behaviours that keep them enslaved.
It all starts when people stop rewarding 
abusers and start blowing the whistle on them, when people say no to manipulation, say no to fear and guilt, say no to the ways of death and destruction. It takes courage to reach out to the support networks around you, whether to your teacher, doctor, social worker, counsellor or pastor, but it is well worth it. It is not your fault. You deserve better. Say no to abuse. Say yes to life. You are worth it. You are loved.
Two resources that I would recommend in your recovery from abuse are Dr. James Dobson’s book ‘Love Must Be Tough’ and Dr. Townsend & McCloud’s best-selling ‘Boundaries’ book. My prayer for each person reading this article is that we and our families will be given the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference, in Jesus’ name.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
-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 $9.99 CDN/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
T.G.I.F.
July 10, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
I vividly remember my father coming home from work on Fridays, and calling out ‘TGIF!!’ Often such announcements would be followed by our whole family going out to celebrate at Nat Bailey’s White Spot restaurant. The White Spot, like A&W, used to be famous for its tradition of eating dinner in one’s car. No self-respecting Vancouverite would dream of eating fish and chips anywhere else.
TGIF was also a pressure that I experienced as an older teenager: a pressure to make my Friday nights very exciting and sensational. If I wasn’t experiencing an adrenaline rush on Friday night, I would feel guilty as if I had failed the invisible TGIF law of the universe.
More recently, I have discovered another meaning to TGIF. TGIF also means facing our fears, facing our anxieties, facing our grief. Friday is a symbol of the ending of the week and also the ending of life. Friday is both an ending and a new beginning, a dying and a potential rising. Very few of us want to face our own personal mortality. Yet our fears of dying are actually our fears of living.
TGIF also makes me think of the most important Friday in the year: Good Friday. Thank God It’s (Good) Friday! Many of us avoid Good Friday like the plague, because like a plague, Good Friday reminds us of death, of pain, and of our own personal mortality. Sometimes we wonder: what in the world is Good about Good Friday? What’s so good about someone going through the worst torture and most agonizing death ever invented?
Many of us are tempted to switch TGIF to TGIS: Thank God It’s Sunday (Easter Sunday in particular). Everybody loves Easter: bunnies, chocolate, eggs, bonnets, lilies, flower crosses, and joyful singing. Everybody loves victory and resurrection and new life. No wonder every church is packed with visitors on Resurrection Sunday. But very few of us love Good Friday. Good Friday just seems too morbid, too deadly, too bloody. It just seems too hard to say TGIF about Good Friday.
I remember as a boy when I first watched a movie about Good Friday. I was struck by the hatred of the soldiers towards Jesus, the brutality that he endured, the whippings and the nails driven in his hands and feet. It all seemed so unfair, so unnecessary. What in the world was good about such a Good Friday? I wanted to drag Jesus down from the cross and save him from his agony. I knew that he had the power to call a legion of angels to save him. Yet he didn’t. I felt very disappointed in Jesus. My other hero Superman always got away when the green Kryptonite was about to kill him. But Jesus let me down and ‘wimped out’ by dying on me. For years, Easter made no sense to me, because I thought it was about remembering a dead Jesus. I had no idea that Jesus was alive and well, and just waiting to change my life.
As a teenager, I became convinced that there 
was no life after death, and that nothing awaited me but extinction and returning to dust. I began to fear the power of death and the meaninglessness and emptiness of life. I even began to secretly wonder if life itself was worth living. TGIF began to lose its effect on me.
One day in Grade 12, I met some fellow students who seemed different: happier, more peaceful, more focused in their life. They had a joy that seemed to bubble over. I knew that whatever they had, I wanted it too. So I asked them what made them ‘tick’. They said with a smile that their secret was a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They told me that Jesus had broken the power of death on the Cross, that he had taken my sin and guilt on Good Friday, and rose to new life on Resurrection Sunday. They told me that I could live forever if I would turn from my self-centeredness and let Jesus become the centre of my life.
I was hungry and curious. So I ‘opened the door of my life’ and let Jesus come in. It felt 
like rivers of liquid love filling me from the inside out. I experienced joy in a whole new way. I felt whole and peaceful in an unexpected way. Most importantly, I lost my fear of death. I knew that my life had meaning and purpose because of Jesus taking my place on Good Friday 2000 years ago. TGIF!
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
-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 $9.99 CDN/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
The Treadmill of Life
July 10, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
My wife, like many loving wives, wants her husband healthy. She had been encouraging me to get back on the treadmill. I enjoy walking, especially throughout the spectacular trails interwoven through our local community. But I had a lot of prejudice towards the idea of spending time on a seemingly never-ending treadmill at the local gym.
Even though I don’t want to be controlled by my wife, I do want to be healthy. So I took the ‘plunge’ and became a ‘convert’ regarding the benefits of Rec Centre treadmills. As a result, I feel healthier, stronger, and more peaceful inside. I actually look forward now to doing the very thing that I once dreaded. Lifting weights, maybe. Stretching, perhaps. But working out on the treadmill, never!
Part of what changed my mind was being ‘reared ended’ by a taxi. I started going for various treatments to loosen up my neck and shoulders, but nothing seemed to really last. The neck spasms and headaches had a nasty habit of sapping a lot of my energy needed for work and family. Finally Dr. Paul Wiggins, 
while adjusting my aching back, said to me: ‘You need a personal trainer’. My immediate reaction was to try to graciously change the subject. Paul however is very persistent in a kindly way, and the next thing I knew, I was meeting with a personal trainer at the local Rec Centre. I have been involved in many sports and exercise programs over the years. Sooner or later I usually would push it too far and too fast, and injure myself. Once injured and ‘humbled’, I often thought twice before ‘getting back in the ring’.
Thanks to six sessions with a personal trainer, I have finally learned how to pace myself, and as a result, I have only injured myself once since getting back to the gym. I have learnt that the secret to virtually all the gym equipment is going ‘one step at a time’. Patience, while not my strongest characteristic, is definitely a virtue in the weight room!
Sometimes the daily routines of life like work, 
taking our children to school, etc, can seem like a never-ending treadmill. Many suffer from exhaustion and feel like crying out: ‘Stop the treadmill! I want to get off.’ Those of us who work out on Rec Centre treadmills know how dangerous it can be to get off a treadmill before it actually stops. As I was working out this morning on a Rec Centre treadmill, I sensed that perhaps there are two different treadmills in our lives: treadmills of life and treadmills of death. Treadmills of life bring strength, encouragement and renewed hope. Treadmills of death bring weariness, discouragement, and monotony. Many medieval treadmills were even designed as punishment for prisoners who would be given no rest.
What helps me keep going on the Rec Centre treadmill is the practice of silently lifting up names of people I care for. Rather than worry about these people, I have been learning how to give them back to the Lord, and trust that they are safe in his hands. Working out on the treadmill teaches me that I am not called to worry about tomorrow, but rather to just take one step at a time, one day at a time. Even though it may feel like my time on the treadmill is endless, experience has taught me that sooner or later it comes to an end. So too, the treadmill of life is over far more suddenly than many of us expect. Every funeral that I attend reminds me that even the best vitamins, the best sports workout, the best vacations can only delay temporarily the inevitable day of my last step on the treadmill of planet earth.
Jesus dismantled the treadmill of death by his death and resurrection on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. As a result, I no longer am chained to that ‘medieval treadmill’ of decay. I choose to take ‘one step at a time’ on the treadmill of life, life that is abundant, exciting, and eternal. See you at God’s Gym!
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
-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 $9.99 CDN/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
Why is it so hard to let go?
September 3, 2009
By Rev Ed Hird
I often notice car bumper stickers saying ‘One Day at a Time’, and ‘Take it Easy’. One of my favorite bumper stickers is ‘Letting Go and Letting God’. Popularized by the 12-step movements. this phrase reminds us that excessive striving and drivenness is damaging to our health, our families, and our inner lives.
Our North American culture is becoming more and more frantic and fear-bound, especially in our shaky economic and political context. Is it little wonder that A.A. teaches us that the first step to sanity is to admit that we are powerless over our problems and that our lives have become unmanageable? This admission of powerlessness is very humbling to our ego. It is a real death to our illusions of grandiosity and immortality.
The 3rd Step to sanity is making a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. The heart of Step 3 is ‘Letting Go and Letting God’. Most of us put enormous energy into remaining in control of our own private lives. The idea of surrendering control to anyone, let alone God, can be enormously threatening. Yet the act of surrender can be the most healing step that we may ever take.
The heart of spirituality, in fact, is surrendering our will and lives to God who really cares for us. As Jesus was hanging in agony on the cross, he cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”. Such a surrender can be our choice one day at a time. Either we commit our lives daily into God’s hands, or we commit our lives into our own hands. Either God ends up at the centre of our lives, or our self ends up at the centre. There is no greater disease than finding one’s self at the centre, the essence of self-centeredness. As Dr. E. Stanley Jones puts it, anything that leaves you at the centre is off-centre.
Self-centeredness is rather like bad breath or body odor. Everyone knows about it but yourself, though you can certainly detect in other people. I have discovered that the heart of my problems in life is not usually other people. Rather it is my own self-centeredness. As a teenager, I tried to live life seeking my own personal happiness. I was never unhappier. I have learnt the hard way that happiness is a by-product of serving others and caring for others in a Christ-like way.
itself to something, or someone, beyond itself. Your self in your own hands is a problem and pain; your self in the hands of God is a possibility and power.” Why is it so hard to let go and let God? Why does our ego so often fight self-surrender with all its might? Because self-surrender is choosing to die to the false self, the self-centered way of living, that the true self might live for the sake of others. “Fears, worries, anxieties, and resentments”, says Dr. Jones, “are all roots in the unsurrendered self.”
As Bob Dylan once wrote, ‘you gotta serve somebody…It may be the devil, it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody’. The choice is ours one day at a time. We may choose to surrender to fear, to pride, to money, to resentment, to popularity, or we can choose to surrender to God who really cares for us. My prayer for those reading this article is that each of us may learn to slow down, let go, and let God.
edhird
