Love Came Down at Christmas
December 3, 2012
By Rev Ed Hird
Christmas is about love. It is so easy to be cynical about love, to be hurt by what looks like love, to give up on ever being truly loved. What is love, sang Tina Turner, but a second hand emotion? When we are hurt, our heart can shut down. We can grow cold and jaded, singing with Tina: “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” Sometimes in my life, my heart has grown cold. Sometimes I lose my passion. That is when God has broken in and renewed my heart with his love. I remember one time when he literally baptized my heart with love. It seemed like I was walking in an ocean of God’s love and healing. I wish that I could live there daily.
Love means many different things to many people. For some, love is expressed through gift-giving. We can thank the three wise men bringing gifts for the flood of presents given every Christmas. But love is more than just giving people gifts. Love is also about quality time. We live in a frantically busy culture, particularly on the North Shore, where it seems like there is never enough time to do all that we want to do. It is so easy in our task orientation to lose the relational focus. Love stops to listen. Love puts down the newspaper and the cell phone to give true face-to-face time. Love is curious, open and present. Love is willing to change. Love is willing to grow. Love is willing to admit that we are often wrong.
Love chooses to encourage when everyone else is tearing down another person. Love, in the words of 1 Corinthians 13, never gives up on you, always believes in you, always takes a chance on you. Love realizes that sticks and stones do break our bones, that words will hurt and crush us. Love says no to bullying. Love grieves over the tragic loss of Amanda Todd. Love never gives up, never lets go, always speaks blessing. Love adds value. Love cares. Love respects. Love allows you to be yourself.
Love doesn’t just talk the talk. It walks the walk. Love is practical, down-to-earth. Love is a cup of cold water, the gift of a meal, a roof over our head. Love is the washing of another’s feet, the wiping of their brow. Love is meeting people’s needs. Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche Community, said that love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness. The Great Physician said that he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Love is the way of the cross, the way of suffering, the way of unselfishness.
Love is both a verb and a noun. To say that God is love is true, but it can feel abstract. What if God put love into action by entering our neighbourhood? What if God came down at Christmas? What if Christmas is actually about God embracing us?
This Christmas I invite you to look again at the baby in the manger, the Christ child. Ask yourself if love came down at Christmas. Ask yourself if this love might touch your heart. The greatest is love. May love fill you, your family and your friends to overflowing during this Advent/Christmas season.
Rev Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-an article for the December 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-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
Revolutionary Forgiveness
August 17, 2012
By Rev Ed Hird
Why is it sometimes so hard for us to forgive others? Forgiveness is often the virtue we all believe in until we have to do it. Sometimes we forgive readily. Other times it is very hard and seems humanly impossible. Eric Wright the author of Revolutionary Forgiveness says it’s as if there is an ‘unforgiveness’ gene spliced into our DNA.
Without forgiveness, says Wright, our relationships become brittle and tattered — or non-existent. Forgiveness stifles the shrill voice of conflict, heals hurts and renews broken relationships. What might happen to our lives if we could learn to offer forgiveness, receive forgiveness and celebrate forgiveness? In Garcia Márquez’s book, Love in the Time of Cholera, a marriage collapses over the failure of the wife to replace soap in the bathroom. The husband exaggerated the problem. The wife refused to admit that she forgot. Since neither would ask forgiveness, they slept in separate rooms for seven months and ate in silence.
What would happen to society, says Wright, if everyone could begin each day with a slate wiped free of grievances, bitterness, anger, failure and sin? Unforgiveness reveals anger and bitterness in our lives. We easily become convinced that our anger is righteous and justified. Our disappointed expectations easily become hardened judgments of others. The Good Book tells us that our hearts are deceitful and beyond cure. It is so easy to point the finger at other people and be unwilling to deal with our own baggage.
In the world’s most famous prayer, we say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” In effect we are saying to God “don’t forgive me if I refuse to forgive others.” Very few of us would consciously pray ‘Don’t forgive me’. We all want to be forgiven. We all want peace of mind. We all want to have the good night’s sleep that comes from a clear conscience. Jesus on the cross prayed ‘Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.’ People who hurt us deeply often have no idea of their painful impact on our lives and families.
When we forgive, we set the prisoner free. Sometimes that prisoner is ourselves. The Great Physician says that unforgiveness emotionally and spiritually keeps us in a torture chamber. Our unwillingness to forgive are like chains on our hands, heart and feet. Life is too short to hang onto bitterness. It is too short to wait for others to repent and say that they are sorry. Often they never will. Don’t wait for them to apologize. Give your bitterness to the Lord. Give your anger and resentment to God. Forgiveness will set you free. My prayer for those who reading this article is that each of us will have the courage to give our disappointments and bitterness to the Creator of the universe.
p.s. You can order Eric Wright’s Revolutionary Forgiveness book online at Amazon.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-an article for the September 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
Transforming a Woman’s Soul
September 11, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
Many of us, whether women or men, fail to remember that we are made in God’s image. God does not make any junk. He makes all things beautiful in His time. God is beautiful. God is the author of all beauty and all creativity. The Psalms tell us that we worship to behold God’s beauty. That is why we are repeatedly encouraged in the Good Book to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
On a recent visit, I was shown a fascinating book by Heidi McLaughlin entitled “Beauty Unleashed: Transforming a Woman’s Soul”. For the past 22 years, her passion has been to help women walk in the knowledge that they are one of God’s most glorious creations.
Heidi says that ‘there is nothing more beautiful than a woman who knows that she is loved. She is the one who glows with energy when she walks into a room.’ ‘Every human being’, Heidi writes, ‘on this planet yearns to be loved. Everyone looks for something real and tangible: unconditional love.’
We can choose to be either part of the problem or part of the solution. As Heidi puts 
it, ‘wherever we are, our love can melt the hardest heart, heal wounded hearts, show compassion, or quiet an anxious or fearful heart.’ Love is the most powerful force in the universe. The heart of Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross was love. As we love hurting people, we help them discover that there is hope and a future.
Heidi teaches that ‘to unleash our greatest beauty, we must let go of expectations.’ This is the heart of the well-known phrase ‘Let go and let God’. So often we cripple ourselves with our hidden demands of how life should be going. Surrendering our hopes, dreams and fears to God will take a heavy load off our shoulders that was never meant to be there. We are called to cast our cares on Him, for he cares for us. That is why the Great Physician said: “Come to you, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, and you will find rest for your souls.’
God is offering a beauty rest that will transform your soul. As Heidi puts it, ‘I believe that there is nothing God wants to do more than to shower us with his life.’ God sees your beauty and calls it forth. Will you say yes to His beautiful love?
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
RG LeTourneau: Model of Generosity
August 18, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
One of the most amazing ‘rags to riches’ stories is the life of RG LeTourneau, as told in his biography “Mover of Mountains and Men”. LeTourneau began his career in obscurity in Stockton, California, where his first job was transporting earth to level out farmland. His frustrations with moving dirt drove him to find a better, more efficient way. In 1922 he constructed the first all-welded scraper that was lighter, stronger and less expensive than any other machines.
R.G. LeTourneau became the greatest obstacle-mover in history, building huge earth-moving machines. During World War II he produced 70% of all the army’s earth-moving machinery. He spoke of God as the Chairman of his Board.
As a multi-millionaire, LeTourneau gave 90% of his profit to God’s work and kept only 10% for himself. A special friend of Billy Graham, in his early days, LeTourneau designed a 
portable dome building intended for Graham crusades. He also founded a university that is thriving to this day.
LeTourneau said that the money came in faster than he could give it away. LeTourneau was convinced that he could not out-give God. ”I shovel it out,” he would say, “and God shovels it back, but God has a bigger shovel.”
Many people see Letourneau as one of the most influential people of the past hundred years. As the father of the modern earthmoving industry, he was responsible for 299 inventions. These inventions included the bulldozer, scrapers of all sorts, dredgers, portable cranes, rollers, dump wagons, bridge spans, logging equipment, mobile sea platforms for oil exploration, the electric wheel and many others. He introduced into the earthmoving and material handling industry the rubber tire, which today is almost universally accepted. He invented and developed the Electric Wheel. His life’s verse was Matthew 6:33: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.”
LeTourneau’s example reminds me that we 
too can be Mountain Movers. As the Great Physician said in Matthew 17:20, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” RG LeTourneau once said: “You will never know what you can accomplish until you say a great big yes to the Lord.”
My prayer for those reading this article is that God may raise up many creative leaders who, like LeTourneau, will be movers of mountains and people.
p.s. To hear LeTourneau share his heart, click on the following link.
The Rev. Ed Hird
Rector, St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-previously published in the North Shore News
-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
Howard Hughes the Tortured Aviator
August 17, 2010
By Rev Ed Hird
One of the most fascinating and tortured movies I have watched is ‘The Aviator’, a look at the life of Howard Hughes.
Howard Hughes’ father invented a revolutionary drill bit that, within ten years, was used in 75 percent of the world’s oil wells, allowing them to drill deeper to previously unreachable oil fields. Standard Oil used fifteen thousand of these Hughes drill bits, leased out from Hughes at $30,000 per well.
At age eleven, Howard built the first wireless broadcasting set in Houston so that he could communicate with ships in the Gulf of Mexico.
With the ‘Hells Angels’ talking movie, Hughes created the first ‘talking movie’ blockbuster, 
astounding his critics who were convinced that this Texan upstart would lose his shirt.
Hughes once said to his top assistant Noah Dietrich: “I intend to be the greatest golfer in the world, the finest film producer in Hollywood, the greatest pilot in the world, and the richest man in the world.” On his death bed, Hughes commented: “I want to be remembered for only one thing – my contribution to aviation.”
As I watched ‘The Aviator’ movie and read several biographies on Howard Hughes, I kept being reminded of Jesus’ comment: ‘What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and yet lose your soul?’ What can a person give in exchange for his soul? (Mark 8:36-37) Brown & Broeske noted in their HH biography, “Hughes acted as if he owned the whole world.”
Hughes ordered RKO Film Executive, William Fadiman, to cut his staff by 25 percent. When Fadiman started to protest, Hughes quickly cut him off. “I know what you’re going to tell me. You’re going to tell me, probably, that you know someone who has cancer or someone who just got married or just had a baby, and that you can’t do that to those people…A corporation has no soul. I can’t know about those things and be a corporation.”
“We brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out”, 
intoned Reverend Robert T. Gibson during Howard Hughes funeral at Houston’s Christ Church Cathedral. Howard Hughes was baptized in an Anglican/Episcopal Church, married in an Anglican/Episcopal Church, and buried in an Anglican/Episcopal Church. He was truly part of the hatched/matched/&/dispatched crowd. But nowhere is there any clear indication that a living faith in Jesus Christ ever impacted Hughes’ soul.
Howard Hughes, as North America’s first billionaire, had everything, and yet was deeply lacking. Brilliantly gifted technologically, he was profoundly crippled in his abilities to sustain the very relationships that make life worth living. Tragically enmeshed in his mother’s apron strings well after her death, Hughes was never able to leave and cleave, never able to commit to a lifelong relationship. It was a dark, troubling relationship that a counselor would later describe as ‘emotionally incestuous’.
Much like Howard Hughes’ womanizing father, Howard found it difficult to connect with women as real human beings. Brown & Broeske wrote that Hughes ‘saw women as possessions. He had to have total control. They were under his command like prisoners’. Faith Domergue, one of his younger conquests, said of herself: “I felt like a butterfly on a pin – beautiful, vibrant, and utterly trapped.” Noah Dietrich his right-hand man said of Hughes that “When it came to women he really cared for (like Kate Hepburn or Ginger Rogers), he sabotaged every time. He simply could not be faithful.” In the divorce petition by his first wife Ella Hughes,
she called Hughes ‘irritable, cross, cruelly critical, and inconsiderate, rendering living together inappropriate.’ Brown & Broeske commented that “Hughes always believed that the problems (with women) could all be solved by externals: fur coats, new houses, expensive cars, and showers of jewelry.” For all of Hughes’ money and all of his lovers, Howard Hughes became lonelier and lonelier. Kathryn Grayson one of his Hollywood paramours said that Hughes seemed to be ‘the loneliest man in the world.’
Howard Hughes’ life is living proof that possessions and things are not where it is at. It has been said that life’s temptations can be summarized in three categories: sex, money, and power. None of these are wrong in themselves, but all of them can be destructive if we forget their purposes and parameters, such as family, marriage and service to our community. Jesus in Luke 14:33 memorably said that ‘anyone who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.’ Howard Hughes’ tortured life reminds us that anything that we cling to will ultimately destroy us. Everything needs to be surrendered back to our Maker. As we choose, no matter how painfully, to ‘let go and let God’, we rediscover our soul. And as the Great Physician puts it, what can a person give in exchange for his soul?
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
Dr Joseph Lister: Medical Revolutionary
August 28, 2009
By Rev. Ed Hird
”Nothing exceeds halitosis as a social offense. Nothing equals Listerine® as a remedy.” Such was the claim of a 1928 advertisement for Listerine ® mouthwash. Listerine® Antiseptic mouthwash, wasn’t born in the bathroom, however, but in the operating room.
Back in 1865, Dr. Joseph Lister, the son of a well-known physicist, first demonstrated the use of an antiseptic in surgery. Later, Dr. Joseph Lawrence refined his product and named it Listerine® after Dr. Lister. History is uncertain whether Lister appreciated the favour.
One hundred and thirty years ago, almost 50% of the patients undergoing major surgery died from infection. As the famous saying went, “The operation was a success, but the patient died.” In the 1870′s, Lister was the first to treat wounds with dressings soaked in carbolic acid. Lister, in agreement with Dr. Louis Pasteur, suggested surgeons wash their hands and sterilize their instruments before operating. After significant resistance, British and American hospitals gradually adopted the sterile procedures promoted by Lister.
Lister and Pasteur were personal friends who supported each other when viciously attacked 
by the medical establishment. When Pasteur was publicly honoured at age 70 by his medical peers, he turned and bowed his head towards Lister, saying: “the future belongs to him who has done the most for suffering humanity.”
Lister has been described as the greatest man of the nineteenth century. Even the common Bandaid, created by Johnson and Johnson, can be directly traced to Lister’s influence.
In the days before Lister, the death rate from amputation, the most frequent ‘major’ operation in his day, was forty percent. By 1910, thanks to Lister’s influence, the death rate from amputation had dropped to less than three percent. How many of us had relatives who were injured in World War One or Two, relatives who might not had survived without Lister’s contributions?
One of the most feared accidents a hundred years ago was the compound fracture, where the sharp end of the broken bone pierced the skin. Because it so often resulted in death from infection, most doctors would immediately amputate the victim’s arms and legs. When I think about how many of our teens have come back from Mount Seymour and Grouse with compound fractures from skiing or snowboarding, I give thanks for Joseph Lister.
Back then, surgeons did not wear gowns or 
gloves, nor did they cover their hair with caps or their noses and their mouths with masks. The result was that the patient was in danger of infection, not from ‘bad air’ as they thought, but from the surgeon’s hands, his clothes, his breath, and his hair. Lister had heard that ‘carbolic acid,’ a coal-tar derivative used to preserve railway tracks and ships’ timbers, was effective in treating sewage in Carlise, and in curing cattle of parasites. By cleaning wounds and dressing his patients with carbolic acid, Lister was able to keep his hospital ward in Glasgow free of infection for nine months. Lister’s cloud of carbolic spray drenched the whole area, surgeon and all, and so killed the bacteria before they had a chance to invade the wound.
Carbolic spray, however, was caustic to the skin and body tissues, and sometimes caused poisoning. The surgeon’s skin would become bleached and numb, his nails cracked, and his lungs sore as he breathed in large quantities of carbolic. Some surgeons became so ill that they had to give up using the spray entirely. Even Lister described it as ‘a necessary evil incurred to attain a greater good.’ After many experiments, he found that boracic acid was a better antiseptic.
Because of his new fame, Lister was invited to leave Edinburgh and join the prestigious King’s College Hospital in London. The newspapers reported Lister as saying that it was his duty to go to King’s because the teaching of surgery in London was very bad. Such publicity did not go down well with his future London colleagues. “Who is this ignorant professor from an insignificant Scottish University,” they said, “that he should dare to criticize the great London teaching-schools?”
Lister also made himself unpopular by 
insisting for hygienic reasons that his wards should be separated from all other wards, and that they should not be shared by any other surgeon. He even had the nerve to bring his own personally trained staff with him from Edinburgh. Little by little however, Lister won the English over.
Dr. Frederick Cartwright, a Fellow in the Royal College of Surgeons, holds that Lister “was a humble servant of God, and that he always asked for His guidance in moments of difficulty. There is no doubt that he believed himself to be directly inspired by God…To Lister, the operating-theatre was a temple.” Lister was very humble, but also very brave and determined. In spite of all the opposition that he faced, he never gave up because he knew that God was guiding him to help humanity.
My prayer for those reading this article is that the ‘Great Physician’ Jesus may empower each of you, like Joseph Lister, to be ‘revolutionaries’ for the healing of our homes and families.
The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector
St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)
http://stsimonschurch.ca
-author of the award-winning 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
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier
Romancing the Heart of Stone
August 22, 2009
By Rev Ed Hird
What is Love, said one anonymous blogger? “It is a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the 
lips to pucker.”
Shakespeare wrote: “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet.”
The famous Pirate Captain Blackbeard was a firm believer in marriage. Some say that he had fourteen wives in different ports. Howard Hughes as a modern-day pirate 
reportedly had over 250 partners/girlfriends stashed in different locations, many which falsely believed that they were married to Hughes. Perhaps this is why Marilyn Monroe sadly commented: “A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesn’t believe, and leaves before she is left.”
Despite all the cynicism and marital meltdown, North Americans still spend $13 billion on Valentines Day gifts, including 200 million roses, 40 million heart-shaped candy boxes, and $3 billion on jewelry.
We live in an age when many couples wake up with each other, and then try to figure out whether or not they want a commitment. Given the ambivalent procrastination of our post-modern culture, it is not surprising that some couples are still stuck on the way to the altar even after their second child. Some want to be completely financially secure first, even to the point of having all the money for their dream Hawaii honeymoon. Without that, they say, marital commitment is just unthinkable.
The biblical position is that ‘true love waits’. The confusion of our culture does make true love wait, not for sex, but for marriage. When God’s standards for intimacy are disregarded, the look-alike solutions become more and more ambivalent. Even living together is now seen as too committed by some young couples. All this leaves many young people jaded and detached, with ever higher standards of who might ever qualify as their future marital partner.
In the movie
Romancing the Stone, Joan Wilder a romance writer meets Jack Colton who violates every one of her imaginary ideas of what a real man will act like. Romancing the Stone reminds us that real romance involves the messiness and disappointments of everyday life. Dr Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, said: “Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”
Eighteen years ago, I wrote a Deep Cove Crier article about Marriage Encounter in which I wrote the following words: “Inside the heart of each and every one of us there is a longing to be understood by someone who really cares. When a person is understood, he or she can put up with almost anything in the world.” Recently I discovered that those words have now been posted on hundreds of Romance websites http://bit.ly/35E4or Why would so many Romance websites be posting my words?
My hunch, as Dr Gil Stieglitz puts it, is that one of the deepest needs of wives is to be truly understood by their husbands. Many men mistakenly think that this is impossible. It is our job as husbands to carefully study our wives that we know them even better than they may know themselves.
Dr Gil Stieglitz tells us in his video series ‘The Five Problems of Marriage’ that one of the top needs of wives is for romance, to be nurtured and pursued. Some husbands don’t realize that they still need to date their wives, even after they are finally married to them. To some men, dating their wives is unthinkable. It would be like trying to get on a bus that they are already on.
Alfred Lord Tennyson romantically wrote: “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.” Romance is not an option. It is fundamental in any healthy marriage. If we have not been romancing our wife lately, she may be suspicious of our initial efforts. It may feel like we are romancing a stone, a stony heart. That is where perseverance and gentleness are so vital in the pursuit.
My wife finds it very romantic when I take out the garbage and do the dishes. Your wife needs to know that she is the most beautiful woman on earth, that she is a precious gift of God to you. Romance is saying, like Robert Browning, to your wife: “Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.”
The Great Physician of our souls said: “This is my commandment that you love one another. No greater love has anyone than to lay your life down for your friends. 
The Good Book says that he that does not love doesn’t know God, because God is love. Pearl Buck the famous novelist wrote: “Love alone could waken love.”
Why are women spending so many billions of dollars each year on romance novels? Largely because there is an unmet need in their life that only you as their husband can fully meet. Your wife is waiting for you to romance her, to win her, to woo her. What are you waiting for?
edhird
