Year: 2022

Categories
Bible Blogging Christian Church God Ministry Scripture

Sunday Scripture

Greetings my friends. It is Sunday May 01ST 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.

It’s the first of two Sunday mornings in a row of preaching God’s Word for my church family. I’m excited about it. It should be very interesting, as I preach two totally unrehearsed and spontaneous sermons from the heart – wholly glorifying God.

Some of you have asked me if I can place videos of our sermons on here. No – I can’t at this time. We don’t record our sermons. We’ve tried in the past with an iPhone and an iPad, but it didn’t work out very well. We tried with Facebook LIVE. That didn’t work either. Our Pastor even preached his sermon to an empty sanctuary and his iPad on a Friday or a Saturday, and then he posted it to our Facebook page on Sunday morning at nearly the same time that he preached it LIVE to us. That was just awkward.

We’re a small church with a small budget, and I kind of like it like that – coming from a big church with a big budget for 8+ years before arriving at my current church of the past 7+ years. There are positives and negatives with both the big church experience – as well as the small church experience. Some of the bells and whistles of the big church experience were impressive, and some were just plain annoying – if not perhaps even a bit offensive. I’m enjoying the positives of the small church experience during this part of my fantastic journey.

I think the best way to share a sermon with you is when I transcribe it into a series of blog posts – much as I did for 6 Sundays in December 2021 and January 2022 with my message on being “Holy & Redeemed”. (Check out my SERMONS page for links.) I may do the same with “Stones & Stumbles” – which served as the sequel to “Holy & Redeemed” and covered 1 Peter 1:23 to 2:9. It’ll probably be another 6-part blog series. I may kick that off in a few weeks.

Meanwhile here’s one of the memes that I’ll preach on later today:

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
1980s Blogging Music Radio

My Top 5 Hits RETRO – 1987

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 5TH Friday of the month, and usually I present a special on this Friday, but due to #GoodFriday 2 weeks ago #RetroFriday was preempted. So this week I go back 35 years ago. Here it is – for the week ending Sunday May 03RD 1987:

  1. “You’re So Strong” – Mental As Anything
  2. “Meet El Presidente” – Duran Duran
  3. “Can’t Be With You Tonight” – Judy Boucher
  4. “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” – Starship
  5. “If You Let Me Stay” – Terence Trent D’arby

My favorite Australian band of all-time – Mental As Anything – scored their 2ND consecutive # 1 smash on my chart in 9 weeks in 1987. “You’re So Strong” followed-up “Live It Up” to the top of the pops. It was a remarkable achievement in that while “Live It Up” was a BBC Radio 1 smash (Top 3 on the U.K. pop charts) – “You’re So Strong” received very limited airplay for a week or two before it fizzled. Strangely – “You’re So Strong” was the only Mental As Anything song that made an impact stateside – as a hit on the U.S. Dance chart.

You know a lot of great bands, duos, and artists have come out of Australia, and I’ve liked a lot of their music. But Mental As Anything rises above all of them. I actually only know two of their songs. “Live It Up” is one of my favorite pop songs of the era while living for 2 years in the United Kingdom. 35 years later I still hear it almost every day via my iPod Shuffles that play at my desk at my workplace. For 3 minutes and 49 seconds it always brings me back to that time when I was a late-teenager (on the verge of my 20s) enjoying life in a foreign country with my best friends at the time. I actually don’t have “You’re So Strong” in my collection, but (as I wrote this) I went on iTunes and I added it to my wish list for purchase later. It’s another good song – peppy and faster than I remembered it during those couple of weeks that it played on the radio 35 years ago. It’ll be a good solid addition to my daily iPod Shuffle airplay.

By the way how about that Judy Boucher song – “Can’t Be With You Tonight”. Back in the mid-1980s Caribbean reggae music was very popular in the U.K. It was a common fixture on pop radio and the pop charts. It kind of served as unofficial promotion for the warm British territories of the Caribbean. I loved its feel on the radio. What a great memory that song was !

Next #RetroFriday I’ll go back 15 years ago to May 2007. It’s the week that Switchfoot had an “Awakening”.

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 Driving Travel

Bermuda

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. Let’s leave the country for this edition, and check-out Bermuda. It’s located about 650 miles due east of North Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s often misidentified as “the island of Bermuda”, but it’s actually the composite of some 180 islands !

The islands are the tops of volcanos that rise above sea level – up to 260 feet. Thousands of other small islands surround Bermuda that are near sea level but under water.

Bermuda is known for its distinct pink sand beaches. Many of their postcards show off their beautiful pink beaches that lead-in to the crystal-clear blue waters.

I’ve been to Bermuda twice, but both times were 45 to 50 years ago as a little kid. Me and my parents went there twice within a few years during the mid-1970s. I remember that my Dad rented a scooter there, and I rode on the back of it with him. (Tourists aren’t allowed to drive cars there.) I also remember watching PBS kids programming on the hotel TV, and the TV would switch channels by itself – and I thought that was scary. (I think it was actually my Dad behind me switching the channels with an early remote control – before I knew what that was.)

I definitely want to visit Bermuda again. Due to its isolated location cruise ships visit there less often than all of the islands to the south in the Caribbean. It would be fun to take a cruise to Bermuda, but I’d rather spend several days there rather than several hours. I’d like to fly there, stay at a nice hotel, and just take public transportation up and down the islands visiting places. Ideally I’d want to visit during the late-Spring to early-Summer. It gets a bit chilly (50s and 60s) during the wintertime months as frequent cold fronts pass through. And then there’s hurricane season during the late-Summer to early-Autumn months. April, May, and June are the nicest months weatherwise.

American Airlines actually has one direct flight in both directions between Miami and Bermuda every day. (It’s about a 2-hour and 45-minute flight.) The flight to Bermuda arrives late at night. The flight to Miami arrives late in the morning. Right now a round-trip flight costs less than $500. Not too bad. I need to keep that in mind for 2023. I should probably start planning for such a trip now. I think maybe fly in late on a Monday night, and spend Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday there, and then return home on a Saturday morning. So 4 days and 5 nights. Yeah – let’s do it !

I’ll keep you updated here on #TravelThursday. Let’s keep traveling together.

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

Categories
Blogging Christian God Ministry Movies Music Radio Television

My Top 10 Hits – Week 271

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:

#TOP10MONDAY WEEK ENDING – SUNDAY APRIL 24TH 2022 WEEK 271
TW LW WKS SONG TITLE ARTIST / SITE
1 1 13 See Me Through It
[2ND week @ # 1]		 Brandon Heath
2 3 5 Wonder Working All Creatures
3 4 5 Fill My Cup Andrew Ripp
4 2 13 Brighter Days Blessing Offor
5 6 11 Sunday Sermons Anne Wilson
6 7 7 Egypt Cory Asbury
7 8 3 Desesperado Evan Craft
8 9 6 Fake It Tauren Wells
9 – 3 The Commission Cain
10 10 2 The Healing Blanca Ft. Dante Bowe

# 1 This Week In:
2021 – “Fires” – Jordan St. Cyr
2020 – “Almost Home” – MercyMe
2019 – “Greatness Of Our God” – Newsboys
2018 – “Freedom Hymn” – Austin French
2017 – “Even If” – MercyMe

ALL CREATURES – Chris Cron (lead-singer) and Ben Thompson (producer) are the duo known as All Creatures. They’ve got my # 2 hit of the week for the 2ND week in a row with the lively “[wonder working]” that they wrote together. It was actually released as a digital single last July, and it received substantial airplay at U.S. Christian radio last September, October, and November. K-LOVE picked-up on it a couple of months ago, but airplay has been rather light thus far. I love the edgy sound of it.

♫ Oh I belong
To a wonder-working God
Making a way like only He could
And all I can say is God is good
Oh I belong
To a wonder-working God
Trading my chains for victory
My God is working a wonder in me ♫

This concludes another weekend of blog posts. I’ll do it again this upcoming weekend – with 4 new entries – known as #TravelThursday, #RetroFriday, #SundayScripture, and #Top10Monday.

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