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 Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin
-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier
P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…
A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.
Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?
Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.
If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or kindle.
-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.
To receive a signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
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.
The A.A. Big Book has a passion for honesty as a key to sanity and sobriety. In one section, it ironically comments that blaming others and anger is a luxury that alcoholics cannot afford. You cannot indulge bitterness and finger-pointing and stay sober. The truth, of course, is that none of us can indulge self-centered blaming of others, and stay healthy. Bitterness always eats the bitter person alive.
“The deepest necessity of human nature”, says Dr. E. Stanley Jones, “is to surrender 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.”
Letting go is to surrender to creative love. Letting go is to align ourselves with God’s healing peace in our lives. Letting go is learning to stop and smell the coffee, enjoy the sunsets, rejoice in our children. Letting go is all about learning to slow down in our pressure-cooker world. Dr. Jones comments that ‘the surrendered are quietly creative and actually produce twice as much as the unsurrendered with all their fussy activity.” You may have heard of the old expression: ‘The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get’.
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.
-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier
P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…
A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.
Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?
Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.
If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or kindle.
-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.
To receive a signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Work as if you were to live 100 years, pray as if you were to die tomorrow.” Many of us are very dedicated and enjoy our line of work despite its intermittent frustrations. On the North Shore where I live, many have put in numerous years of preparation for our life work, either at University or some other institute. As a result, we see ourselves as responsible hard-working citizens who pay our own way and earn our own bread.
The danger with being hard-working and fairly successful is that we start thinking that we’ve achieved it all by ourselves. We think of ourselves as self-made men and women. Self-made people, however, suffer from the problem of worshipping their “maker”. “Self ” becomes their focus and centre, Whenever self is on ‘the throne’. other relationships (spouse, children, parents, work) tend to suffer. Self-centredness is the greatest disease for successful, hard-working people. The cure for the disease is to begin to see one’s life and “successes” more as a gift than just an achievement. Most of us were probably taught as children either at home or public school to say “Give us today our daily bread.” The value of such a prayer is that it reminds us that receiving a gift is just as important as earning a reward. If we are very intelligent, it is ultimately a gift that we never earned. If we are very artistic, it is very much a gift.
It we are good with finances, once again that is a wonderful gift. Now we are responsible for how we develop and make use of the gifts God has given us. But let us never forget that all of our abilities are ultimately a pure gift.
A few years ago, the Associated Press released a study done by an agricultural school in Iowa. It reported that production of 100 bushels of corn from one acre of land in addition to the many hours of the farmer’s labour, required 4,000,000 pounds of water, 6,800 pounds of oxygen, 5,200 pounds of carbon, 160 pounds of nitrogen, 125 pounds of potassium, 75 pounds of yellow sulphur, and other elements too numerous to list, and, in addition to these things, which no human being can produce, rain and sunshine at the right time are critical. Human beings have no control over these things. It was estimated, the report said, that only 5% of the produce of a farm can be attributed to human efforts.
If you feel led to pray the Lord’s Prayer this week, I encourage you to pray “Give us today our daily bread” with a new sense of thanksgiving and gratitude.
-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier/North Shore News
P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…
A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.
Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?
Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.
If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or kindle.
-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form. Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.
-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca