WordPress now tells me which countries my visitors are coming from…

2012-02-09 to Today (350,744 visitors so far)

Country	Views
United States	3,774
Canada	1,551
United Kingdom	1,253
Australia	246
Philippines	225
India	174
Brazil	147
Mexico	115
Turkey	108
Netherlands	106
Germany	104
Poland	97
France	91
Italy	90
Malaysia	70
Sweden	60
Indonesia	60
South Africa	57
Ireland	57
New Zealand	55
Portugal	55
Singapore	51
Spain	51
Czech Republic	49
Norway	48
Switzerland	44
Denmark	44
United Arab Emirates	41
Croatia	41
Hungary	40
Hong Kong	39
Thailand	35
Romania	34
Russian Federation	33
Austria	31
Pakistan	29
Greece	29
Belgium	28
Slovakia	26
Jamaica	23
Peru	23
Republic of Korea	23
Japan	22
Viet Nam	20
Cyprus	20
Israel	18
Sri Lanka	18
Bulgaria	17
Finland	16
Jordan	15
Guatemala	15
Dominican Republic	15
Chile	14
Saudi Arabia	14
Slovenia	14
Ukraine	14
Venezuela	13
Georgia	13
Egypt	13
Lebanon	12
Serbia	11
Colombia	11
Taiwan	11
Iceland	11
Macedonia	10
Malta	10
Puerto Rico	10
Rwanda	10
Lithuania	10
Bosnia and Herzegovina	10
Honduras	9
Nepal	8
Qatar	8
Kenya	7
Maldova	7
Trinidad and Tobago	6
Ghana	6
Nigeria	6
Argentina	6
Panama	6
Bahrain	6
Costa Rica	5
Cambodia	5
Bangladesh	5
Bahamas	4
Estonia	4
Latvia	4
El Salvador	4
Montenegro	4
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	4
Bhutan	4
Guyana	3
Belarus	3
Armenia	3
Iraq	3
Namibia	3
Nicaragua	2
Luxembourg	2
Côte d’Ivoire	2
China	2
Bolivia	2
Benin	2
Ethiopia	2
Barbados	2
Myanmar	2
Aruba	2
Ecuador	2
Djibouti	2
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya	2
Belize	2
Mongolia	2
Mauritius	1
Grenada	1
Algeria	1
Paraguay	1
Saint Kitts and Nevis	1
American Samoa	1
Albania	1
Guam	1
Yemen	1
Botswana	1
Jersey	1
Maldives	1
Macao	1
Morocco	1
Cayman Islands	1
Zambia

Please continue to keep the people of Christchurch New Zealand in your prayers

Update from Christchurch New Zealand:

(Rosemary Behan in Sydney Australia has family in Christchurch.)

“At the moment of course, people are in rescue mode, but in the streets of Christchurch people are dealing with smelly houses from fridges and freezers that are going off,  toilets that you’re not allowed to flush,  no water and no electricity. 

 

Damage is widespread, but it’s rarely shown on the television.  For instance,  my son apart from not being able to live in his house,  missing outer wall,  says the church is too badly damaged to ever use again.  That’s a fairly new building,  no glamour ‘rubble shot’ but the people of that area will have nowhere to meet.  That is going to be repeated all over the city,  Jay wonders how the Anglican church is going to survive this  ..  indeed how the city will cope with this.  He said after only one day,  the thought of just walking away seems so tempting.

 

“Let me talk about children”

Let me talk about children, Jay has three.  In the September 4 earthquake, his youngest daughter was trapped in her room by a falling bookcase,  when he got in she jumped in his arms and said,  “Dad,  make it stop.” Great faith in fathers, but the mums and dads feel so helpless, they can’t stop anything.  Since that date, there have been 4500 so called aftershocks, each of which is an earthquake in it’s own right.  Children have their sleep interrupted, and mums and dads can’t promise that is the last one dear, there won’t be any more.   Now an even worse one has hit.  Children are thoroughly traumatised and their parents are desperate to be able to comfort them.

 

I could tell you about the missing young mother who is a member of the church at St. Saviour’s who is missing in one of those buildings you see on the television, but quite honestly,  it’s ALL the citizens who need the prayers of Christians(…),  that they cope with the next hour, and the next hour.  That they find water and food, that they get some sleep free of aftershocks,  because you can’t cope with anything when you lack sleep and are full of fear.

 

When in our freedom, we take a shower and think of those there who are breathing in the dust of rubble and can’t even wash and who are sitting on their buckets in their gardens to go to the loo  ..  we should remember to pray for them.

 

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2011/02/23/news-from-christchurch-new-zealand-%E2%80%93-damage-is-widespread-but-rarely-shown-on-television/#more-43342

The Love Affair

 By Reverend Ed Hird

 

On New Year’s Eve in 1976, the well-known author Michael Harper was sailing solo on Lake Taupo in New Zealand. Suddenly his boat capsized in a particularly violent squall about a mile offshore. Clinging to the side of the boat and unable to right it, Michael was rescued after an hour in the chilly glacial waters. He nearly died of hypothermia.

 

When Michael recovered, he asked God why He had saved him and what God wanted him to do. The reply came something like this: “I want you to learn how to love people the same way as I do.” Michael learned that very day that life is meant to be a Love Affair, that life is meant to be dedicated to learning how to really love each other in a genuine way. The famous ethicist Joseph Fletcher wrote that the opposite of love is not “hate” but rather “indifference”. Fletcher writes, “… There is one thing worse than evil itself, and that is indifference to it.” The lowest point to which our society often seems to sink is when it says, I couldn’t care less.’

 

As Michael Harper struggled with learning how to really love people, he became aware that there are few words in the English language that are more open to abuse than the word “love”. “Love is swampy” is how Joseph Fletcher describes the problem. Much of what is called love today is little more than making sure that our needs are met. Need-centered love, however, is self-centered and narcissistic. True love, said Karl Barth, is when a person gives them self to another with no expectation of a return, in a pure venture, even at the risk of ingratitude, and of that other person’s refusal to make a response of love. That kind of love is very scary because it involves the possibility of being rejected and hurt. That is why we so often prefer self-centered love to other-centered love.

 

Harper comments that “the widespread identification of the word love with sex indicates that most people think that sex ought to be an experience of love … and that is where the frustration comes in. People feel cheated because sex has not delivered the goods.” A good marriage, says Harper, in which both husband and wife delight to give each others pleasure, and thereby reassure one another of the love that they have for each other, does more for the reestablishment of true love than almost anything else. The bible calls this kind of true love “AGAPE LOVE”. Most of us have been to weddings where a passage is read from the bible telling us about true love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud it is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13).” it would be helpful for all of us, whether churchgoers or not, to regularly measure our marriage relationships against that standard of Christian love.

 

I am more convinced than ever that love is what it is all about. That is why the bible even says that God is love … not self centered love, but rather other centered love. Harper reminds us that “Jesus did not come to present a new set of ideas to us. He came to show us the meaning of love. He revealed what love is. He manifested love. The secret of Jesus’ revolution was not the love of power but the power of love.” When Jesus, hung on the cross, he stretched out his arms and said, in effect, “this is how much I love you.” And most amazingly when the Roman soldiers were torturing him and humiliating him, Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them for they ‘don’t know what they are doing.” Jesus has taught me that the finest quality of true love is its power to forgive. As the late Michael Harper puts it, love without forgiveness is meaningless.

 

My prayer for those reading this article is that true love may so invade our lives that costly forgiveness will become normal for us in our daily lives.

 

The Rev. 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’

-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier

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

Captain James Cook: World Explorer

By Rev Ed Hird

 

Sometimes I ask myself: Why is English now spoken by hundreds of millions of people in virtually every country of the world?  Why do most people of English ancestry live anywhere but England?  Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, South Africa, etc.  Perhaps it is because as seagoing islanders, the British were insatiable searchers for that which was beyond.  From the ranks of such inexhaustible seekers emerged the greatest of the 18th century nautical explorers –Captain James Cook.  James Cook had an unbounded curiosity and a deep interest in everybody and everything with which he came into contact.

 

Born on October 27th, 1728 in Yorkshire, Cook’s father was an impoverished Scottish farm labourer and his mother a simple Yorkshire village woman.  Cook began his sea life by lugging coal off the treacherous east coast of England.  There he learned how to survive the storms, fogs, hidden shoals, and tricky tides.

 

In 1758, Cook was master of the Pembroke, a 1,250 ton, 64-gun man-of-war.  In early 1759, the Pembroke joined a blockade of the Saint Lawrence River designed to prevent French ships from carrying supplies to the fortress colony of Quebec.  Cook led patrols up and down the river, charting every hazard, and marking a channel for the warships to follow.  During the British assault on Quebec City, Cook successfully navigated the massive Pembroke up the narrow, twisting, and frequently shallow waterway.  Without the help of Ship’s Master James Cook, it is doubtful whether the British troops could have taken the fortress by surprise.  With only a few years of elementary school education, no one ever expected that a ‘nobody’ like James Cook would one day be chosen as a navy sea captain.  Since the upper class were virtually the only officers, there was little chance of promotion by merit in that caste-bound naval world.  By sure grit and determination, he taught himself mathematics and astronomy, and at age 40, was chosen as captain, an age when most naval officers had passed their peak.

 

After being appointed captain, Cook went on to complete three global voyages from 1768 to 1779, exploring and accurately mapping more of the earth’s surface than anyone else before or since.  He became the first European to set foot in Australia, the first to fix the position of remote places accurately, the first to establish longitude (one’s position east and west), and the first to have extensive contact with all the various peoples of the Pacific.

 

It can safely be said that in his time no man knew the world as well as Captain Cook, and no other explorer had such an impact on the global map.  As a result, the name of James Cook is commemorated across the length and breadth of the vast Pacific: Cook Strait and Mount Cook in New Zealand; Cooktown and Cook’s Passage in Australia; The Cook Islands in Polynesia, and Cook Inlet in Alaska.  With Cook’s discoveries and surveys, the geography of the world was nearly complete.  Only Antarctica remained to be discovered.

 

Upon reaching Hawaii, the islanders worshipped Captain Cook as the god Lono.  Curiously, Lono was envisioned as a white god fated to arrive on a magical floating island during the holiday of Mahahiki.  Cook’s ships’ huge sails therefore were construed to be long staffs bearing Lono’s divine white banners.  When Cook returned to Hawaii from having explored British Columbia, he upset the Hawaiians who had then turned to the season for worshipping the god of war Ku.  Things went from bad to worse, and when Cook attempted to hold the king hostage for the return of a stolen cutter, hundreds of Hawaiians converged on him with deadly effect.  To many of his crew such as the future Captain George Vancouver, losing Captain Cook was like losing their own father. 

 

Captain James Cook as a World Explorer was not afraid to check out uncharted waters. My prayer for those reading this article is that we too as world explorers may be willing to ‘walk in the spiritual feet’ of Captain James Cook.

 

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