1000 and Counting

One of my favorite Sesame Street characters was The Count.  I used to count with my girls to entertain them, but mostly to entertain myself. When most people imitate a character to entertain their kids, especially one like Barney or The Count, we are talking about kids that are 2-6 years old.  Mine were teenagers. Sure I did that when they were younger, but I have fond memories of driving through toll booths in Orlando with my girls counting out money to the toll collector (before e-pass) in the voice of The Count.

Speaking of counting, thanks to Google analytics, I can see that this week marks the visit of my 1000th page view.  I have no idea who the 1000th visitor is, but if I could, I would give some sort of prize.  It is funny how we count, and the perspective to which we apply our totals. For me, 1000 visits to my web site is amazing, but for many bloggers, they get 1000 hits in one post. Analytics also tells me I have people from over 26 countries around the world who have read my blog.
Of these, my favorite is Mauritius, a small country off the east coast of Africa. Prior to someone from there visiting my site, I could not have told you where Mauritius is, but now I know a bit about the country because I did a bit of research on it, and you should too.  I would love to go there for a vacation, but it costs way too much just to get there.
Back to counting. Yesterday in church our pastor commented that the Hubble telescope has discovered something like 360 billion new galaxies. 360 BILLION!!! How do we even count that? Ok, there is one over there, to the left of that is two, then three. It would take years just to count that high. How do we know what separates the galaxies? Maybe there are just 8 really big galaxies...but 8 isn't an impressive number that would make it into a sermon. 360 Billion...that number did it. What if there were only a mere 200 million galaxies? What number impresses you? We sold over 300 CDs at our church and it was a huge success. If the Rolling Stones sold 300 CDs you would have never heard of them, and they would have gathered lots of moss.  Perspective. That is it. I recall a pastor once telling me at that this event we spent many hours of manpower working towards, that if just one person came, it would be worth it. Really? I know the parable of the lost sheep, but this seemed like the parable of the lost perspective. If we are going to do something worthwhile, why not make it count for as many people as possible and not actually target one person. My recent trip to Nepal showed me a church in the minority. With 95% of the people claiming Hindu or Muslim faiths, there was no room for a Baptist church, Catholic Church, or Anglican church. There is a Christian church.  I liked that. A friend showed me a recent survey, focus of the survey was not important, that showed 35% Catholic, 9% Christian, etc.   Funny, I thought Catholics were Christian, so why the two numbers? To use an analogy from a friend of mine who has gone back to school and is dissecting animals, we have dissected Christianity into so many parts it is almost like we are heading towards the 360 billion galaxies story.  We don't count someone as Christian unless they go to our church.  As I sit here listening to the thunder, I can't help but think of God looking down on us saying "8 gajillion, 8 gajillion and one, 8 gajillion and two marvelous Christians, HA-HA-HA (insert sound of thunder ).