This blog deals with Christian living, disability, ethics, Life Issues, a wonderful miracle, and faith in Jesus Christ.
“Our once great western Christian civilization is dying. If this matters to followers of Jesus Christ, then we must set aside our denominational differences and work together to strengthen the things that remain and reclaim what has been lost. Evangelicals and Catholics must stand together to re-establish that former Christian culture and moral consensus. We have the numbers and the organization but the question is this: Do we have the will to win this present spiritual battle for Jesus Christ against secularism? Will we prayerfully and cooperatively work toward a new Christian spiritual revival ― or will we choose to hunker down in our churches and denominationalisms and watch everything sink into the spiritual and moral abyss of a New Dark Age?” - Mark Davis Pickup
Thursday, April 30, 2015
FORCED ORGAN HARVESTING IN CHINA
He asked me to post the following link to his recent address in Brussels to a European Parliament Workshop on organ harvesting in China. David Kilgour reveals a shocking reality about involuntary forced organ harvesting. Go to this link:
http://www.david-kilgour.com/2015/speech_04212015.pdf
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
BLOG SURPASSES 365,000 HITS
Saturday, April 25, 2015
NEVER GIVE UP ON LIFE
Morally corrupt Supreme Court decision |
Always choose life even when it does not seem worth living or is near its natural end. If you do not choose life for your own sake, then choose life for the sake of those who will come after you who may consider suicide. Live for more than yourself. Always be a witness for life and posterity.
Charlie Chaplin was a great comedian and accomplished pianist.
He wrote the beautiful song 'Smile' in 1936 at the height of the Great Depression. He wrote the melody of Smile for the film Modern Times. The lyrics were written by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons.
Life is worth while.
[Click image below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHPDrInbybw for Charlie Chaplin's "Smile".
Thursday, April 23, 2015
UN POPULATION COMMISSION STUNNED BY RESISTANCE TO THEIR SEXUAL AGENDA
Click on link above for Stephano Gennarini, J.D, "UN Population Commission Shell-shocked by Resistance To Sexual Agenda", Center For Family and Human Rights, (Washington, DC) 18 April 2015.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
CHRIST UNDERSTANDS EVERY GRIEF
Life with serious disability is a very hard journey. I know, I've lived with degenerative multiple sclerosis for over 30 years. At the deepest point of grieving, life can seem like an endless series of disappointments, accommodations and compromises, lost opportunities, and inexpressible sorrow. One can feel totally alone, even in a crowded room.
Such a loneliness
It is there, in the middle of an endless night, lying wide awake staring into darkness, that the horrible truth of life's misfortune can seem too great to bear. A human soul lays open like a gaping wound. Whimpers break into sobs of raw, pulsating grief. I know, I've been there! It is a dangerous place to be.
Grievers beware! Emotions are unreliable, they are apt to intensify the feeling of isolation out of all proportion. Tears obscure vision and grief distorts perceptions of reality.
There is no such thing as an endless night. It only seems that way. The longest night must eventually give way to dawn. It is only fear and grief that tells us otherwise. Even the pitch black of arctic winter days will, in due course, transform into a peculiar summer midnight sun.
Many people with profound disabilities have risen above their predicaments and abyss of intense grief to incredible spiritual heights and human achievements -- sometimes in spite of their disabilities and sometimes because of them.
Beethoven |
George Frederic Handel (1685-1759) suffered from manic depression. His beloved Messiah was written at the end of a depressive bout.
John Milton (1608-74) was blind when he wrote Paradise Lost (1667). Paradise Lost is generally considered to be the greatest epic in the English language. (Remember that John Milton also wrote Paradise Regained.)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an "invalid and a recluse" to use the phrasing of one biographer. There was nothing invalid about her -- her gift for lyric poetry is with us to this day.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was physically disabled from polio at the age of 39, yet as
Grief, sorrow and fear are not unique to people with disabilities:
they are common to the human experience. Everybody is acquainted with sorrow. Everyone is afraid. With the exception of babies and small children, everyone has fears from the past and fears of the future.
Most people are afraid of serious self-examination lest they come face to face with inner demons, character flaws and emotional handicaps. They might be challenged to go through a difficult process of change. Some people fear being forgotten while others fear being remembered.
We are afraid of committing ourselves wholly to love yet afraid of being unloved. Many people are afraid of committing themselves to lives with purpose -- yet despise those who do.
Some people are afraid of dying outside God's grace yet they are afraid to truly live within it. We may be afraid being seen as extreme yet are afraid to venture outside mediocrity.
Helen Keller |
Family of the heavy-hearted
Those of us who are full-fledged members of that "great family"
have the Passion and cross of Christ as our chief example and inspiration. It is to Christ we can ultimately turn with the knowledge that his sufferings dwarfed all human pain and sorrows. There is no grief Jesus does not understand. Christ is the ultimate affirmation. He is the ultimate over-comer. He can change us, if we allow it, from victims to victors. In the darkest night of your soul let Christ bring you through it to bring you to a morning of understanding, and ultimately home. -- Mark
[Click on image below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwDRZMoJtkk for Libera, "You Were There"]
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
INCLUSION AND DISABILITY
necessary component to healthy, enlightened vibrant communities. People with disabilities have unique contributions to make to their communities and society. They have an indispensable place in church life. And the Church has a critical supportive role to play in the lives of people with disabilities and their families, helping them to live lives as normal as possible.
We can work to remove barriers that curtail or stop disabled people from reaching their full potential that Christ intended for them. It is a wonderful witness to a world that is cold and hard.
[See Australian video Social Inclusion and disability by clicking below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZCYYMeVHNw. It's just over 2 minutes long.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
SEND A LIFE AFFIRMING MESSAGE THIS ELECTION
Me speaking to ALIES information session |
for the Alberta Life Issues Educational Society (ALIES). I was thrilled to see Catholics, Orthodox and evangelical Christians coming together in common concern over Canada's direction toward euthanasia and assisted suicide. That Christian concern to resist Canada's culture of death must spill into the streets, make its collective formidable presence felt on election ballots, and openly demand protection for all vulnerable human life. Resolute and even militant Christian unity, is now necessary.
This is election time in Alberta. Albertans must question political candidates that seek their support whether they will work to stop taxpayer funded abortions? Will they work to protect healthcare professionals' conscience rights not to participate or refer for physician assisted suicide? If a political candidate's answer is no to either of these questions, the candidate is unworthy of your vote. If no candidate in your constituency will stand up for the protection of all vulnerable humanity, spoil your ballot by writing "no pro-Life candidate" on it before putting it into the box. If you are using electronic ballots, spoil your ballet then send a tweet to Party leaders informing them of your action.
The sanctity of all human life is more important than supporting candidates that will tolerate more killing.
Mark
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
THE LAW OF HUMAN NATURE STILL EXISTS
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
HOLY WEEK, CHOICE & THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND SIN
The problem is this: The moment there is a possibility of choice there is a risk of making the wrong choice. A perfect God of love wants to love and be loved perfectly. Real love involves our choice to love God back -- or we can reject Him. God took that risk. I suppose He could have created a world where the objects of his love had no choice but to love him, like robots. But that is not love.
C.S. Lewis put it this way in his classic Christian book Mere Christianity:
C.S. Lewis |
My generation (the baby-boomers) have illustrated the risk of
choosing as much (or more) than previous generations. My generation took a freedom to choose and twisted it into barbarity of the licence of choice where the weakest and most vulnerable must pay for the choices of those with power over them. Large swaths of my generation threw off restraint and have scoffed at the Giver of freedom.
This has resulted in the deaths of millions upon tens of millions of children before they ever saw the light of day or took their first breath. Now freedom to choose will soon expand to killing suicidal people with disabilities, incurable conditions or "psychological pain", in my nation (Canada). Choosing to reject God is wreaking havoc of the social and legal fabric of America too, and other parts of western civilization. We chose evil rather than good.
In the same way as people go to Auschwitz and wonder how such evil is possible, future generations may look at the remnants of our abortion clinics and wonder the same thing.
Our choices will either save us or condemn us.
The good news is that we can change what we have chosen and choose God rather than ourselves. The beautiful paradox is that when we give God our broken selves, He gives us back ourselves healed and more complete, able to finally love and be loved more fully than we ever imagined possible, if we allow Him to.
And that brings us back to the point of Holy Week which we are observing now. Christ's Passion and death on the cross was the ultimate expression of perfect love to pay the penalty for our sins and choosing evil over good. It is a free gift for all you accept it and believe in his atoning sacrifice at the cross. Repentance is liberating! It frees us from choosing what was wrong and evil to choosing what is right and holy. Repentance and faith in Christ opens new horizons for an ecstasy of experiencing His perfect love and inklings of paradisial joy that awaits God's children.[1]
[Click image below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKpEUxgZR5Y for Father Robert Barron on the "Problem of Evil": 10:00 ]