Month: February 2022

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Bible Blogging Christian Church God Holidays Ministry Music Radio Scripture

My Top 10 Hits – Week 261

Every Monday I post my all-new Top 10 Christian hit music chart based on personal preference and influenced by radio airplay from the previous week. It’s the continuation of a weekly hobby that goes back 40+ years. Here’s this week’s chart:

COUNTUP FOR THE WEEK ENDING SUNDAY FEBRUARY 13TH 2022 WEEK 261
TW LW WKS SONG TITLE ARTIST / SITE
1 1 14 Weary Traveler
[9TH week @ # 1]		 Jordan St. Cyr
2 3 10 Jesus Is Coming Back Jordan Feliz Ft. Mandisa & Jonathan Traylor
3 2 6 River Of Life Mac Powell
4 4 19 Come What May We Are Messengers
5 8 3 See Me Through It Brandon Heath
6 7 3 Holy Spirit Come Patrick Mayberry
7 9 3 Brighter Days Blessing Offor
8 6 7 Walking Free Micah Tyler
9 5 16 In The House Crowder
10 – 1 Sunday Sermons Anne Wilson

# 1 This Week In:
2021 – “Every Step Of The Way” – Cade Thompson
2020 – “The God Who Stays” – Matthew West
2019 – “Maybe It’s OK” – We Are Messengers
2018 – “Gracefully Broken” – Matt Redman Ft. Tasha Cobbs Leonard

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY – (Or Saint Valentine’s Day.) Like most holidays it’s highly commercialized nowadays with cards, candy, roses, hugs, and kisses being exchanged, and restaurants filling-up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It originated as a church holiday (going back over 1,500 years) – particularly in the Catholic and Lutheran church. Growing up in the Catholic church (and school) as a little kid in the early-to-mid-1970s I remember Saint Valentine’s Day as being quite the event on the calendar. You know I love Christian pop music, as there’s a lot of love in it – even when “Love” is not part of the title or chorus of the song. The overall theme of most of the songs on the radio is love, and the biggest station that plays them all – is K-LOVE. Our God created love. He is love. He commands us to love one another – on this day – and on every day.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Three things will last forever – faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7,13 NLT)

This blog is # 36 worldwide on the Top 80 Christian Music Blogs and Websites chart. Thank You for including us Feedspot !

This concludes another weekend of blog posts. I’ll do it again this upcoming weekend – with 4 new entries on Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday. I don’t blog on Saturdays. That’s my day of rest.

Your likes, follows, and comments are always appreciated. Thank You for being part of my online ministry to share God’s Good News and win souls for Christ through His music. I’m also on Twitter and Flickr.

Be blessed my friends !  May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

All rights reserved (c) 2022 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Categories
Bible Blogging Christian Church God Ministry Scripture

Sunday Scripture

Greetings my friends. It is Sunday February 13TH 2022, and this is the day that our LORD has made. Let us rejoice. Let us be glad in it. Let us celebrate this great new day of believing, following, trusting, loving, and being more like our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ.

This past week I ordered a bunch of items online. I’ve been doing that more often over the past few years. It’s just so convenient to go online, select items I want to purchase, place the order, and then have them delivered either electronically or straight to my front door within a few days.

I bought a replacement chair mat for my computer workstation. My previous one was cracking and disintegrating in spots. The new one is surprisingly high-quality (much nicer than my previous one). I was skeptical as to what I would receive at my front door, but it turned out to be a great purchase. I also bought a brand-new printer. My previous one – almost a decade old (bought in May 2012) – was making loud grinding sounds when the print rollers moved. It lasted a long time for a cheap printer !

I also bought some electronic study material online for my preaching ministry.

You know what’s available online – absolutely free to include shipping and handling ? God’s Word. The entire Bible is online in every translation imaginable. All you have to do is Google or Bing it, and there it is. You don’t have to pay one cent for it. You can view it. You can download it. You have unlimited access to it.

I discovered the Bible online back during the Summer of 2006 when my salvation began and I heard Bible verses on the radio and I wanted to look them up and read them again and read the verses before and after them.

Yahoo and Google were my on-ramps to the Bible back then. I still look-up Bible verses that way 15½ years later, but I also have electronic and physical Bibles that I utilize daily.

With every means available to us today there’s no excuse to not refer to the Bible constantly if you call on the name of the Lord to be your Savior.

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip His people to do every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NLT)

If you don’t know who God is, and you want to – I direct you to His Gospel here online. Check it out. You’ll eventually discover that you are indeed a character in His Bible. God is talking about you. He knows you. He wants you to know Him.

If you wish to learn more about the God I know then stay tuned to #SundayScripture. The best is yet to come !

Thank you for reading my blog for this day, and may:

The LORD bless you, and keep you.
The LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

All rights reserved (c) 2022 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Categories
1990s Blogging Music Radio

My Top 5 Hits RETRO – 1997

Every Friday I post the Top 5 of one of my classic hit music charts based on personal preference and influenced by radio airplay from either 15, 25, 30, or 35 years ago this weekend (rotating each week).

It’s the 2ND Friday of the month, so I go back 25 years ago. Here it is – for the week ending Sunday February 09TH 1997:

  1. “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” – Madonna
  2. “Spiderwebs” – No Doubt
  3. “I Want You” – Savage Garden
  4. “Wannabe” – The Spice Girls
  5. “I Like It Like That” – The Blackout Allstars

My Top 5 hits a quarter of a century ago were all # 1 hits – 2 formers, 2 futures, and the current. Also – “I Want You” and “I Like It Like That” were 2 of my Top 5 hits for the entire year of 1997.

“I Like It Like That” was an ENORMOUS smash in 1997 here in Miami, but it wasn’t the radio mix of the single. It was the D’Ambrosio Club Mix [Edit] that became an anthem that year in heavy rotation for most of the year from start to finish. Whenever that jam was played on Y-100 I cranked it up in my 8-year-old 1989 Geo Spectrum while cruising up and down South Dixie Highway. (Now that’s retro !)

Next #RetroFriday I’ll go back 30 years ago to February 1992.

It’s halftime my friends. I’ll be back on Sunday and Monday with 2 more blog posts for this weekend. Enjoy your Saturday. Thanks for going retro with me !

All rights reserved (c) 2022 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

Categories
Blogging Photography Travel

My Carnival Liberty Vacation 2022

And now Week 4 of my 7-week series on my 8-day fun-filled vacation on the Carnival Liberty out of Miami Florida.

Back in 2019 when I was thinking about booking my next Carnival cruise after a fun 7-day cruise on the Carnival Glory I knew that I wanted to return to Aruba and Curaçao on my next cruise. The last time I visited new islands for the first time on a cruise was back in October 2012 on the Carnival Valor when I stepped foot on Dominican Republic, Curaçao, and Aruba on 3 successive days. That was an awesome 8-day cruise – seeing and exploring new lands for the first time ever.

When I saw that the Carnival Horizon (a new ship) was sailing from Miami to Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao – I was intrigued. Bonaire was the missing link from that October 2012 cruise. I’d be able to conquer all 3 of the ABC Islands if I booked that cruise. Bonaire is a fairly new port-of-call for Carnival (since January 2015), and it appears that they will be sailing there more often – and perhaps to Curaçao less often.

So I booked that Carnival Horizon cruise to the ABC Islands in February 2020 for January 2021 that was ultimately canceled (due to the pandemic). I then rebooked it for exactly a year (52 weeks) later in January 2022. The older Carnival Liberty replaced the Carnival Horizon for several sailings in January (including mine). Despite the downgrade in the ship – I was still excited about this cruise to the 3 small islands down at the south-end of the Caribbean. I would have loved to sail on that much newer cruise ship, but the bigger reason that I booked this cruise was the unique itinerary to all 3 of the ABC Islands on 3 consecutive days in alphabetical order.

So back to my story. It’s Day 5, and the 2ND-half of my cruise has begun.

Fun Fact: I embarked onto the Carnival Liberty shortly after 11 AM on Saturday January 08TH 2022, and I disembarked shortly after 8 AM on Sunday January 16TH 2022. That’s 189 hours. Half of that is 94½ hours. That would place the exact halfway point of my cruise shortly after 9:30 AM on Wednesday January 12TH 2022 – Bonaire morning !

The Carnival Liberty was the only cruise ship in port that entire day. We had the entire island to ourselves – and the 20,000+ permanent residents of the island.

We arrived in mysterious Bonaire early on that Wednesday morning just after 7 AM ship’s time (Miami Florida) / 8 AM local time. I didn’t have a shore excursion until 12:30 PM, so I had plenty of time to relax on the ship, and to take some nice photos of the island from the top decks.

The port, capital, largest city, and population center is Kralendijk. It’s on the upper-southwest coast of the island that measures about 24 miles from northwest to southeast. It’s about 3 to 5 miles wide at all points. It has a mountain range on its north side with peaks of up to nearly 800 feet above sea level. Bonaire kinda-sorta looks like a distorted Florida geographically that’s been elongated in its panhandle and squished a bit in its peninsula. The mountain range extends from “Pensacola” to “Jacksonville”, and Kralendijk is right along the “Big Bend” area.

I took a nearly 4-hour bus tour of the island (via a Carnival-sponsored shore excursion). I think it was the most popular tour. Our bus driver and tour guide were 2 older Dutch gentlemen with a weird and wacky sense of humor who often derided each other in a somewhat loving way. They were very protective of their somewhat primitive island, and they want it to stay that way and not become another congested Aruba or Curaçao. They did appreciate us (as tourists). They seemed very bitter that (in their general words) the Netherlands gives all of the money to Curaçao to distribute evenly between themselves, Aruba, and Bonaire; yet, Bonaire gets very little of that allocated funding – just a tiny percentage of it. Perhaps some of their comments out loud should not have been so, as they did a bit of political commentating rather than presenting their beautiful island to us.

Nevertheless I enjoyed the tour of the island from the salt flats of the southeast to the mountains of the northwest. I hope to see it again in the future !

I took almost 50 photos of the island. I’ve selected six of the best to present here:

Next #TravelThursday – it’s on to Curaçao.

All rights reserved (c) 2022 Christopher M. Day, CountUp