Love Came Down at Christmas

By the Rev. Dr. 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.

 

 

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector, BSW, MDiv, DMin

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

Say No to the Status Quo

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Our family worked for the Woodwards Department Store for many years.  My mother met my father through a Woodwards dance put on for the Air Force servicemen. My sister worked for Woodwards. For one month, I worked for Woodwards at age 17 in Women’s Shoes.  I had no idea how complicated it was to find all those hundreds of shoes hidden on massive shelves in the back of the store.

For many years, Woodwards in Oakridge was our favorite walking destination.  My mother and grandmother loved Woodwards’ famous $1.49 Day sales to which massive crowds would always flock. Woodwards to me was an unshakable permanent institution that had always been there, and would always be there. It was as Canadian as hockey and maple syrup.  Woodwards had been there for one hundred years since Charles Woodwards founded it in 1892.  Then suddenly one day it was gone.  It had been swallowed by its conforming to the status quo.

In Seth Godin’s bestselling book Tribes, he comments that the organizations that need innovation the most are the ones that do the most to stop it from happening.  It is very easy to get stuck, to embrace the status quo, and hunker down. Godin says that this will result in our implosion.  Organizations with a future must be willing to be risk-takers, to embrace creativity and innovation.

Godin says that it is not fear of failure that cripples leaders. It is the fear of criticism.  No one likes to be publicly criticized.  21st-century leaders need to be willing to get out of the boat and pay the price of going first.  In my thirty years as an Anglican clergy, I have sometimes wondered whether I acted too early. At other times, I have been concerned that I was not moving fast enough.   Leaders have to be very sensitive to the still small voice.  Timing is everything in leadership.  We don’t want to rush ahead of God, nor do we want to lag behind.

Godin says that “the largest enemy of change and leadership isn’t a ‘no’. It’s a ‘not yet’. ‘Not yet’ is the safest, easiest way to forestall change. ‘Not yet’ gives the status quo a chance to regroup and put off the inevitable for just a little while longer. Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late….There’s a small price for being too early, but a huge penalty for being too late.”  There have been times in my life when the boat almost left and I was not on it.  There was a time in North Vancouver when I had to make a tough decision that I personally hoped would just go away. I was stuck in the ‘not yets’.  One of my friends sensed this and challenged me to not be a ‘maybe Ed’.  When the time came eight and a half years ago, God gave me the courage to push through my ‘not yets’ and my ‘maybes’.  The rest is history.

Seth Godin teaches that every tribe needs leaders. Managers make widgets and create bureaucracies and factories.  Leaders have followers and make change.  The secret of leadership according to Godin is simple: “Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there.”  One of my most palpable fears as a teenager is that I would end up stuck in a job that I would hate and have no way out of. In my thirty years as a clergyperson, I have often felt overwhelmed and inadequate for the task, but I have never regretted devoting my life to serving others as an Anglican priest.

As the leader of St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver, I have seen many changes and challenges over the past 23 years.  One of the reasons I am still at St. Simon’s NV is because of the climate of innovation built into its DNA.  Our lay leaders are passionate, committed, and sold out to Jesus Christ.  I admire deeply their willingness to risk all in order to be faithful to their mission and calling.  Seth Godin says that ‘The safer you are with your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is.”  Leadership is a choice: a choice to risk all to be faithful to the vision of a better future. The very nature of leadership, says Godin, is that you’re not doing what’s been done before.

We live in a culture that worships size, buildings and money.  Many of the Woodwards of yesterday have become the dinosaurs of today.  No organization is immune, no matter what its numbers, facilities or financial resources.  If we refuse to innovate, we choose to die.  Remarkable visions and genuine insights, says Godin, are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance.  The forces for mediocrity will align to stop you.  Never give up.

Criticizing hope, says Godin, is easy. Fearful bureaucrats can always say that they’ve done it before and it didn’t work.  But cynicism is a dead-end strategy.  Without hope, there is no future to work for.  Godin observes that without passion and commitment, nothing happens. So often no one in an organization really cares; no one deeply believes in the bigger vision.  No one is willing to sacrifice so that breakthroughs can happen.  Real leaders are willing to pay the price. Real leaders are willing to risk all for the greater good.  Real leaders care.  I challenge each of us reading this article to come up to the plate and choose to be a real leader. Say no to the status quo.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector, BSW, MDiv, DMin

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca

-an article for the December 2010 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