ADVENT PRAY25

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl6nuQ8SPxg

A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR HURTING PEOPLE: THE BEYOND SUFFERING BIBLE

 

This Christmas the Beyond Suffering Bible is a great gift you can give to people affected by disability or chronic conditions who need the infinite hope only God can give to those who suffer.

This unique and critically important New Living Bible includes Book Intros, profiles, devotionals and connection points developed under Joni Eareckson Tada’s inspiration, hard-won insights, and oversight and leadership. 

The Beyond Suffering Bible was carefully crafted by her team at Joni and Friends at Agoura Hill, California in partnership with Tyndale House Publishers to specifically address the needs of people affected by disability and those facing chronic conditions. 

The Beyond Suffering Bible was first published eight years ago, and I had the privilege—at Joni’s request—to give input to its development. Upon its release, Joni sent me a copy with a note:

Dear Mark… I am so grateful for your endorsement and words of encouragement about the new Beyond Suffering Bible. … My heart is filled to overflowing with joy when I think of the many caregivers, special-needs families, people with disabilities and countless others who will be encouraged by God’s Word, as well as the many notes, essays and references in The Beyond Suffering Bible. … [T]hank you for being part of the team who is
helping to make this happen.”

Is there someone in your family or community who might benefit from the Beyond Suffering Bible? Order a copy today from Joni and Friends at https://joniandfriends.org/product/beyond-suffering-bible/ or a kindle version on Amazon. It may be the most significant Christmas gift you give this year. Click on the link below for a message from Joni at the time the Beyond Suffering Bible was first published—Mark Davis Pickup

BEAUTY AND TRUTH IN A BLEAK MIDWINTER

 

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan 

Earth stood hard as iron

Water like a stone

Snow had fallen

Snow on snow, snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter, long, long ago

I’ve never left North America. All my nearly 72 years have been lived on the western Canadian prairies, thirty-seven in the French-Canadian community of Beaumont Alberta, known for its historic Catholic church at the top of the hill. Beaumont means ‘beautiful hill’. My wife and I raised our children in our little house at the bottom of that beautiful hill. 

The city spreads out from the church at its center. For over a century, beautiful frosty Christmas Eve midnight Masses have been celebrated, reminding people that Christ must be our focus of Christmas. Sub-zero temperatures do not stop the faithful from midnight Mass on December 24^th. Winter wind may frost the stained-glass windows but inside the old church, the light of Scripture, sacred traditions of the Season and carols warm the hearts of the people. 

We know that our hope stems from a small stable in Bethlehem for there could be no Calvary without a Bethlehem. Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity, chose to leave the Godhead and take the human form of a servant to pay the price for our sins on the Cross and give us the ability to be reconciled to God through faith in Christ.* 

Heaven cannot hold Him

Nor earth sustain

Heaven and earth shall flee away

When He comes to reign

In the bleak mid-winter

A stable-place sufficed

Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ

This was the divine plan since the Fall of man in Eden from the intimacy of a Holy God from humanity and continues to this day. We must not allow the festivities and jolliness of Christmas to lead us from that colossal cosmic birth of Mary’s beloved Christ child.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air

But only His mother in her maiden bliss

Worshiped the Beloved

With a kiss

When I consider the magnitude of what happened in Bethlehem and the unfathomable Love behind it, I can scarcely take it in. All I can do is give Christ my broken body and heart and surrender everything in my life to His divine will, content with whatever it might be.

What can I give Him.

Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb

If I were a wise man, I would do my part

Yet what I can, I give Him

Give my heart

If you have not given your life to Jesus Christ, I invite you to seek Him. He’s at the door of your heart.** Open it to Him to come in and your life will change forever. It’s only a prayer away. Hear In A Bleak Midwinter, by Celtic Winter at the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xborgn0TOm0

___________

* Matthew 20.28, Luke 22.27, Philippians 2.7. 

** Revelation 3.20.

EVERYBODY DO THE TRUMP DANCE!

 

The charm of the Trump dance. Maybe if Canadians all do it 

throughout 2025, we might be able to elect a common sense Conservative government too, and rid the country of the burden of Liberal woke agendas and ideology. I've begun my twinkle-toes version of the Trump dance.

THE GREAT FAMILY OF THE HEAVY HEARTED

 

I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1984. It was so aggressive that my doctor doubted I would live more than a couple of years. Disease rampaged through my brain and brainstem with terrifying neurological symptoms and horrible creeping paralysis that rendered my legs useless and my right arm heavily compromised. For many, many years, I was in a full electric wheelchair. Had it not been for the love of God and my family, I might have given up on life. 

Still, there are some griefs that cannot be expressed. They are unique to the sufferer. So too, there are some griefs unique to their loved ones and they cannot be expressed either. What bridges these two solitudes is the transcendence power of love. Yes, I learned early that the embrace of a loved one, during times of deepest sorrow, was more effective therapy than any psychiatrist. It is the embrace of a loved one that gives us entrance to what Helen Keller called “the great family of the heavy-hearted". She said,

When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance, and inevitably, we will feel about us their arms, their sympathy, their understanding.

I have an old photograph. It is a picture of my grandson comforting me with a hug in my sorrow just before he had to leave me.
Two kindred hearts that just knew. But knew what? We both whispered to each other “I love you." That's what. He waved goodbye and was gone. I wept. Life and creeping paralysis seemed less lonesome when he was with me.

Soon, he would need love’s courage as a salve for his own young broken heart. He’s autistic. The world can be so cruel to those who are different. During his carefree days as a tiny child, life seemed safe. He would sit on my lap as we whirred in my electric wheelchair to explore our little town’s playgrounds. 

Twenty-two years have passed since that photo was taken. Our warm little town grew into a city where people do not know each other anymore. My small grandson grew into a young man. He has come to know the hard edges of life for people with challenges. I know that pain. 

He knows the ache of loneliness when old friends stop calling. It’s not that they're unkind, just hard to find. Yes, I know that pain too.
He has discovered the frustration of not being able to do things other young people do with ease and his question that seems to echo into empty air: Why? Through my many years of paralysis, I asked that question too. 

He knows the bewildering isolation of being socially awkward—always being the odd man out, a round peg in a world of square holes, looking into a void of a tenuous future of a solitary existence that weighs heavy on his broken heart—a heart that yearns for the solidarity of human companionship. I weep again because I wish he did not experience those pains that the great family of heavy-hearted people have known throughout the ages. 

I will soon be gone; my life in this world is almost finished. I am an old man. My body has been ravaged by 40 years of devastating neurological disease that has left my brain with too many scars to count, a mini-stroke and cancer (as I write these words, I am about to have more biopsies). I worry for my grandson. I take comfort in knowing he knows Christ.

God is the Father of the great family of the heavy-hearted to which my anguishes have been given to Christ’s salvific suffering. The great family of the heavy hearts can be an anteroom to heaven's divine love. With God we are never alone. 

Long ago, I gave my defeat and sorrow to Him who took my broken, heavy heart into His broken body. His words came to me: "Be still and know that I Am God." (Psalm 46:10)

I remember again the hard-won wisdom of Helen Keller’s words: “When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy hearted into which our grief has given us entrance, and inevitably, we will feel about us their arms, their sympathy, their understanding.”

There is a greater family of the heavy-hearted that Jesus’ grief gives me entrance, through faith in Him as my saviour. He has been my companion through mountains of grief. I have felt about me His arms, His sympathy, His understanding. 

Lord, be with my grandson in his solitude of sorrow. Show him the divine consolation You have given me. Let him also feel about him Your arms, Your Sympathy, Your understanding. Show him he is not alone in his autism. You are with him. Teach him (as You taught me) to use his disability as a witness for You. He will discover, like I have, that there is purpose and meaning to be found in our suffering. My every Why has been answered in the truth and reality of Jesus Christ. — Mark

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” — Jesus Christ (Matthew 11:28-30)

EUTHANASIA AND THE DISABLED: AN INTERVIEW WITH WESLEY J. SMITH

“We live in a time in which eliminating suffering is considered by many to be society’s ultimate purpose. Too often, this leads to policies that eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferer.

"Still, for those not experiencing intense pain or anguish, arguing for improved care instead of increased access to assisted suicide or euthanasia can seem like a blithe platitude. “If you were really suffering,” I have heard repeatedly in my more than thirty years involved with these issues, “you would sing a different tune.”"

"Perhaps. But many people who suffer intensely sing from the same songbook. One, is my good friend and guest for this episode of Humanize, Mark Pickup. Pickup has experienced the intense terror and anguish caused by disabling and progressive multiple sclerosis over several decades. Yet, in the midst of his intense pain, he became one of North America’s most prominent public speakers seeking to help others maneuver their way through travail and to find meaning even in the most difficult life circumstances. He is also a noted Christian apologist."

"Pickup has addressed politicians in Canada and the United States, churches and denominational leaders, universities, high schools and community groups, hospital medical staffs, local, state, and provincial pro-life conventions as well as keynote speaker to U.S. National Right to Life Prayer Breakfasts (2001, 2005, and 2010). Pickup is extensively published in Canadian and U.S. media and has appeared on innumerable radio and television programs warning against a cultural drift toward euthanasia acceptance. Mark has received numerous awards for his work including the Monsignor Bill Irwin Award for Ethical Excellence (Canada) and a Governor General’s Medal for community service. He writes the Human Life Matters blog that deals with issues of the sanctity of human life and other matters of cultural concern.” — Wesley J. Smith, Lawyer and author Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute in Washington, DC.

Hear his interview with me at https://humanize.today/podcast/mark-davis-pickup-on-living-with-intense-suffering-and-experiencing-a-miraculous-healing/

OUR INABILITY TO GIVE OR RECEIVE PERFECT TRUE LOVE

Jesus was asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”[1]

To be a follower of Christ, the Lord asks us to totally surrender our lives to Him and be willing to accept whatever that means or where He leads us. It is so hard. That’s why most people only give their lives to Him when they have exhausted all other options, and their lives are in shambles. I was one of those people. By the time I’d made a complete train wreck of my life, I didn’t have much to give God, but I gave the shards of my broken life to Him. He accepted me. 

I could not fathom such love as what I experienced with that life-changing first encounter with Christ, on a cold Canadian January night in 1980. The warmth of His love took over my heart that was as cold as the frost on the windows,[2] My soul was filled to its brim and overflowing with a warm flood of His love and forgiveness of me and my litany of sin. I thought I would burst with divine ecstasy! It was (and remains) the same love experienced by billions of people throughout the centuries. Saint Clement 1 (35-99 AD) said, 

“Who can express the binding power of divine love? Who can find words for the splendor of its beauty? Beyond all description are the heights to which it lifts us. Love unites us to God,”.

There it was in the first century—unmistakable divine love of God, its beauty and power beyond description. I wept with primordial joy that existed, not from my birth, but eons before I was created in my mother’s womb. Is that the binding power of love Saint Clement wrote about? It create a bond not bound by time or place. 

Love for God and our neighbour is incomplete and faltering, at times halting, at times gushing, but always falling short of perfect love of Christ. Perhaps that is because we are incapable in our present state of experiencing the truest love of all: God. That will only be experienced in eternity. 

True love has certain characteristics. Saint Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 13. Saint Clement also addressed authentic love:

“[I]t cancels innumerable sins, has no limit to its endurance, bears everything patiently. Love is neither serval nor arrogant. It does not provoke schisms or formed cliques, but always acts in harmony with others.”

Pretty daunting with flawed human capabilities.  Saint Clement said it cannot be without Christ.

“By it all God's chosen ones have been sanctified; without it, it is simply impossible to please Him. Out of love the Lord took us to Himself because He loved us and it was God's will, our Lord Jesus Christ gave his life's blood for us — He gave His body for our body, His soul for our soul.” 

Therein lies the key to our ability to truly love our spouse, our children, our neighbour, our community, and our nation, but most of all to love God with all our heart mind and soul. Without Christ it is impossible. The light of His sublime Love will envelope His people forever.

Mark

---

[1] Matthew 22:36-37. Cf. Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 10:12, Matthew 22:38, 1John 4:31.

[2] 1John 4:7-12.

WE SPOKE OF LIFE AND DEATH, LOVE AND HEARTBREAK ... BUT MOSTLY WE TALKED ABOUT LOVE (BOTH HUMAN AND DIVINE)

 

A number of years ago, my wife LaRee and I delivered an address to one of Calgary Alberta's largest churches, Centre Street Church. We were asked to speak about our lives together. We have experienced the full spectrum of Life issues: abortion, incurable illness, disability, euthanasia and end-of-life issues. It was an honour to be with our brothers and sisters in Christ at Centre Street Church. The congregation gave us a standing ovation. I hope you will also enjoy it.  

Sadly, four years later Canada legalized euthanasia. 

If you would like to hear what we said, click here or here https://cschurch.ca/sermon/the-sanctity-of-human-life

Mark

FOR THE SAKE OF OUR CHILDREN

 The HumanLifeMatters blog has enjoyed over 1,300,000 visits from people across North America and beyond. I’m going to put it all on the line with this post. If Google suspends or confiscates my blog, so be it. I may be silenced by censors at Google, Facebook and X, but I will not be silent, especially when it comes to the mental, physical or spiritual health of children.

Pedophiles are now trying to sanitize their perversion and develop an air of acceptance for their abhorrent and devilish predilection for having sex with children. They have developed a new euphemism to mask their sick deviancy and moral corruption: “minor-attracted.” They would like it to become part of our vernacular. No!

Euphemisms are meant to hide or disguise something offensive or evil and make it sound innocuous or even altruistic. For example, to avoid the ugly word abortion, people who advocate it refer to reproductive rights, or the right to choose but avoid what the choice is between: The choice to kill one’s unwanted unborn child, or let the baby live. Canada's euphemism Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) avoids the repulsive words euthanasia or assisted suicide of sick or disabled people. Euphemisms hide monstrous actions or ideas behind pleasant words to placate and convince people to accept what was previously disgusting or unacceptable. Massage the message.

Pedophiles are using the template of the 2slgbtq2s+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, two-spirit, and additional people who identify as part of sexual and gender diverse communities). Pedophiles want to include their initials “m.a.” (minor attracted) with the alphabet crowd—identifying as part of the sexually “diverse communities.”

For the sake of preserving our children’s innocence and protecting their gentle hearts, souls and bodies from predators who would hurt them for their own sexual gratification, society must not allow any normalization of pedophilia. As parents, grandparents, and citizens we must aggressively and publicly oppose pedophilia and its acceptance.  

We must rise up at this desperate time because our previous great Western culture—the greatest in history— is crumpling. We must reclaim what has been lost and fortify what remains against the hidden and overt left-wing woke agendas of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, Justin Trudeau and Canada’s Liberal Party, and their toadies in the mainstream media. We must demand—in the streets if necessary—that gender ideologies in school curriculums be removed. They only serve to confuse children needlessly. For the sake of catering to a tiny number of genuinely gender-confused children, they attempt to confuse all children. The odd gender-confused child needs counseling therapy not affirmation or spreading a transgender message that has morphed into a social contagion. 

Citizens and people of good will! Demand that female-only safe places (like washrooms and change rooms) be safe places exclusively for biological females. The feminist movement fought for safe places for women. Now the most basic of safe places for women are being invaded by males pretending to be females. Stand with resolute determination to keep our women and daughters safe in places made for them only. Lobby to keep women's sports only for women. Stop drag queen story hours. They are intended to introduce normalize transvestism, men with sexual fetishes, and grammatically incorrect idiotic preferred pronouns. 

Stop this madness! Let’s return to some semblance of sanity and normalcy. Use your vote and influence with your families, neighbourhoods, and communities to oppose the sort of horrifying world we are barrelling toward faster than we could have imagined.

MDP

PROFILES IN CATHOLICISM: An Interview With Mark Davis Pickup

  

To read Profiles In Catholicism: An Interview With Mark Davis Pickup click here.

 

CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES AND AUTHENTIC COMMUNITIES

From 2006-2016 I was a columnist for a Canadian Catholic newspaper. In one of my columns, I wrote about children with disabilities and their authentic inclusion within the human community. I received a huge response from families with disabled children and people of goodwill who thanked me for writing it. The grandchildren I referred to are adults now and will have their own children. Maybe their great-grandfather will take them to a playground—except I will be walking. In 2018, God raised me from my electric wheelchair to walk again as an old man, after decades of paralysis. (It's strange: As a young man I needed a wheelchair, as an old man I walk. It should be the other way round)  Below is the column I wrote so many years ago. It was a long way from then to now and I'm happy to say that accessible playgrounds are everywhere.

________________________________________

It was a beautiful sunny day for a man to be at a playground with his preschool grandchildren. That’s exactly where I was. I took my grandson and granddaughter to a playground at a nearby elementary school; one child sat on my lap while the other stood on the back of my electric wheelchair as we whizzed our way to the playground. 

 

The place was packed with children of various ages having fun at afternoon recess. I had to watch from the safety of the grass because my wheelchair would get bogged down in the soft sand. 

 

“Look at me!” cried my grandson as he hung upside down from the monkey-bars. My wee granddaughter stood at the top of a slide waiting for me to look at her before she slid down laughing. Zoom! It was so good to be alive and breathe in the fresh April air; it was good to feel the sun’s warmth on my back after a long winter. To be surrounded by such childhood joy warmed my heart.  Joie de vivre!

 

Sweet inclusion

 

Something else made my heart soar. I noticed four children with visible disabilities in the middle of playful mayhem. One child had a withered arm, a second had cerebral palsy, a third with Down’s, and a fourth child was deaf.  It was good not to see “program” or “strategy” to include them. It just happened.  The children simply took each other’s differences in stride and played together.  

 

I sensed that what was unfolding before my eyes was the way God wants life to be—and children were leading the way! They didn’t need behavioral psychologists or experts to show them how to include children with disabilities. They just played. I also sensed that adults and experts need the children’s example more than the other way around. We all do.  

 

Some people are very good at ensuring special needs children are a part of their communities and included in normal childhood. The school I just mentioned is a shining example. Integrated schools are valuable vehicles to teach acceptance and inclusion of people with disabilities. The able-bodied children of that particular school seem to have incorporated this important life lesson into their daily lives. 

 

Why are so many adults such slow learners? Why do I still hear resistance to the integration of children with disabilities into public schools?  

 

Dichotomy of the age

 

At the same time as some children with disabilities were frolicking with my grandchildren at the playground, other children were dying at the hands of experts.  That’s the dichotomy of the age.  We can be so enlightened yet so savage toward children with disabilities.

 

Why are eighty percent of pregnancies involving Down’s children aborted? Nearly fifty percent of pregnancies involving babies with spina bifida end in abortion.  Why is that?  Why are pregnancies scrutinized—with a search-and-destroy mindset—for the slightest anatomical or genetic anomaly or imperfection? Disabled newborns are routinely denied nutrition and hydration in hospitals across North America. Why does modern medicine, and bioethics believe severely disabled children are worthless—so worthless they do not deserve life itself?  Tell that to the four children with disabilities I mentioned playing happily in the schoolyard.

 

I have actually heard some people say it’s unfair to bring a profoundly disabled child into the world.  Feminist icon, Betty Frieden, referred to disabled children in utero as “monstrosities.” She was wrong, so utterly, terribly wrong.

 

People are not monstrous, ideas are.  Deformity or disability can cripple a person’s body or cognitive function. But it is ideas, stone-hearted and brutal ideas that cripple human hearts. It is the logic of darkness and ignorance that stunts the development of character and denies any embrace of love and acceptance to the disabled, the handicapped, or the genetically flawed.  That may be the way of the world but it is not the way for followers of Jesus.  Those who have encountered the living Christ know that all humanity is imperfect, yet still loved by God.  God cares about each individual’s development within a larger common good.  

 

Transformation

 

Real inclusion is concerned with the development of each individual as an integral and indispensable part of a community. Authentic communities of concern understand that every person has something to contribute to the common good.  Sometimes that contribution takes the form of simply being present and being welcome.  

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says this about the common good:

 

“In keeping with the social nature of man, the good of each individual is necessarily related to the common good, which in turn can be defined only in reference to the human person: … By common good is to be understood “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach there fulfillment more fully and more easily.” The common good concerns the life of all.” (Nos. 1905 & 1906)

  

Put another way, it’s liberty within social form and constructs. 

 

We must take care never to judge the worth of another human being! That is not our right. Humanity’s social nature calls each of us to take care never to close the door of loving acceptance of any human life, regardless of their physical or mental state. 

 

Pray for God’s help to transcend beyond self-focus to become other-focused. Seek to understand more than being understood.  Embrace even when your natural inclination is to repel. Be equally concerned about the common good as individual fulfillment.  Do this and you will begin to see, unfolding before your very eyes, the way God wants life to be.  I’m convinced of it.

 

CANADA'S CONSERVATIVE PRAIRIE LION

 

I was going through some old files and came across a note from Canadian Christian conservative icon Ted Byfield. Canadian Senator Paula Simons once called Ted the "godfather of Canada's modern Conservative Movement." Ted Byfield was my friend, as he was to my son and my father. Ted's wife Virginia died in 2014, after 65 years of marriage. It must have been like tearing off a limb. I don’t think he ever recovered from losing her. He responded to my wife's and my condolence card.

 

 

 

The suffering he referred to was me enduring 30 years with aggressive MS. But that fire I went through would pale in comparison to losing my wife, LaRee. We are both 71 and have been married for over 50 years. We are one, just as Ted and Virginia were. Ted's gone now: He died at his home on December 23rd, 2021. He is with Virginia and our Lord, the Creator of love and marriage.

 

In 2022, a biographical book about Ted Byfield’s life, written by Jonathon Van Maren, was published with the title Prairie Lion(available on Amazon here). The inside cover of the book dust jacket says:

 

“For more than half a century, Ted Byfield was one of Canada's
most significant public Christians, and his life's work included the founding of a religious order, the formation of several Christian boarding schools for boys, a series of influential magazines, laying the groundwork for a political movement, writing books, and serving as editor on a magnificent 12 volume history of Christianity, THE CHRISTIANS: Their First Two Thousand Years. He gave voice to western alienation when there were a few others who would, and help create the consensus that resulted in the first Conservative majority government in decades." 

You can purchase one or the 12-volume set here or here.  (My son Dean Pickup was the art director for the series.)

 

Now, nearly three years after his death, an evening to honour Ted Byfield will be held in Edmonton, on September 25, 2024. Speakers include former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, Albertan Premier Danielle Smith, Canada’s Leader of The Conservative Party and Leader of the Official Opposition in Ottawa, Pierre Poilievre, and a keynote address by Preston Manning.

 

For tickets click here  

 

SHE OPENED A DOOR FOR LOVE AND RICHNESS

 

“And what do you do for a living? I am frequently asked. “Well, umm, … I’m a stay-at-home father with a severely disabled daughter.”  “My, … you must be an amazing man, I could never do what you are doing.” 

Nothing puffs me up more than to be amazing, except with the realization that I am not. However, something is amazing to me. It's amazing to me that I have been blessed with the privilege of caring for my disabled daughter for 29 years.

From the beginning, as new parents, my wife Caroline and I were counseled by professionals to give up our child because a disabled child is a great burden and a huge financial commitment. We were encouraged to place her in the care of professionals so that we could “get on with our lives.”

There were two crucial considerations that we as parents that we think about. First was that healthcare professionals did not have a clue how to care for our child. Within days of Nancy's emergency caesarean birth, exasperated nurses handed our seizuring daughter to us because they were unable to feed or calm her.  It was evident that professionals didn't know any more about what Nancy needed then we knew, as young, inexperienced parents. We learned that after hours of cuddling, Nancy was relaxed enough to breastfeed.

The second consideration was that there were no professionals who could love Nancy like we did. Nancy is the product of love between my wife and myself; she is God's creation. Whatever Nancy was or would become, she was part of us; she was a member of our family. 

As Nancy’s father, my number one responsibility is to love and care for her even though I would be required to make sacrifices. I chose to honor God's instruction in Ephesians 5:28, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies”; because I knew that a strong marriage would equip us to be a strong family. Some days I felt cheated from time with my wife because Nancy's care came first. Other days I felt like a failure when my efforts to calm Nancy seemed useless. 

The love chapter (1 Corinthians 13) speaks about love and I took this command to love my wife, my child and my family seriously. I was reminded, “Love never fails.” Whenever anger welled up in me and my feelings of inadequacy bore down on me, these thoughts renewed my focus: 

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (verses 4-7).

Nancy taught our family a love lesson; We have learned that sacrifice and difficulty are made bearable by faith in Jesus Christ through the practice of love as defined in first Corinthians 13. While Nancy is not able to communicate and is totally dependent on those who love her, she has blessed me immensely. My wife and companion of 35 years passed away two years ago. Nancy continues to live with me and I love and care for her. What I have not achieved in my life because of my devotion to Nancy has been exceeded by blessings I could never have imagined. She truly is God's gift and she has opened the door of love and richness that I could have never imagined. God does all things well!

David P., Alberta Canada

THIS FATHER'S DAY, I REFLECTED ON HEART TRANSPLANT HISTORY

 

My father and me, September 1967

Two months later, my dad suffered a massive heart attack that nearly killed him (his heart stopped 3 times and was revived with defibrillators (that was the first time I heard of them). His heart was so badly damaged from earlier angina (he was a pharmacist, we suspected he had been treating his own symptoms with things like nitroglycerin for quite some time). When he had his major heart attack, he was 50 and I was 14. 

For days, his life hung in the balance. On December 3rd 1967, Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first heart transplant on a South African named Louis Washansky. My father's treating heart specialist told the families with heart patients in the ICU, that they were not to talk about the heart transplant with them. The doctor said the transplant was premature because anti-rejection drugs weren't ready. He was right. Mr. Washansky died within 18 days of his heart transplant. We were devastated because we had been grasping at a staw of hope for our dying loved ones. Happily, my dad did not die and lived another two years, without a transplant.

Dr. Barnard did his second transplant on 3 January 1968, on a dentist named Philip Blaiberg who lived 19 months, dying from heart complications on 17 August 1969. Anti-rejection drugs progressed at lightning speed. Today, anti-rejection drugs and therapies have been perfected. According to the Mayo Clinic, of people who have a heart transplant, half are alive 11 years after transplant surgery. There are about 5,000 heart transplants performed around the world annually.

FROM ASSISTED SUICIDE TO ASSISTED LIVING

New Zealander Claire Freeman was disabled in a car accident at the age of seventeen. She became suicidal. and advocated for legalizing assisted suicide in New Zealand. In Canada, we euphemistically call it "medical assistance in dying" — even if the person is not actually dying. (People used to call it murder.)

Today Claire is happy to be alive. She worked through her external and internal trauma and grief. When it comes to suicide (assisted or otherwise) communities must never acquiesce to people's desire to die when they have sunk beneath the turbulent waves of their circumstances. 

The goal of any civilized society must be to encourage live with dignity and assisted for the despaired or defeated individual find that dignity. Nobody knows what tomorrow may bring, or what's around the next corner of life. It's that way for everybody and has been forever. 

Euthanasia and assisted suicide advocates talk about "death with dignity." Dignity is not bestowed someone by injecting them with a lethal substance. Dying with dignity is the end result of having lived with dignity. Helping someone kill themselves is not dignity it is abandonment and exclusion from the human family—the ultimate exclusion of the tomb.  

People with disabilities (often acquired as adults) need support and a community of concern that lifts their value, even if they have ceased to believe in their own value. We must ensure resources are available to them to overcome their trauma, loss and grief and eventually strike a new course for their lives within their new reality.   

That's what a real community is. That's what a real community does.

MDP

DONALD TRUMP'S TRIAL AND CONVICTION: HARBINGERS OF THINGS TO COME?

 

I think Donald Trump’s conviction will be overturned on appeal—but it won’t happen until after the election. It was part of the Democrat’s nasty strategy to win the election; they were willing to make a mockery of America’s justice system, to achieve it. They had to get rid of the effective and threatening opposition: Donald Trump. 

We saw similar tactics with Vladimir Putin and the recent election in Russia he handily won (see https://www.voanews.com/a/putin-wins-election-with-no-effective-opposition/7531874.html ). You could easily and accurately replace the headline by replacing Putin’s name with Joe Biden. In the abhorrent farcical conviction of Donald Trump, we witnessed, by their actions, that the Democrats do not believe in free and fair elections; they are only concerned about retaining power at any cost and winning the Presidency again in November. 

Exactly one week after Donald Trump was falsely convicted in New York, the free world solemnly observed the 80^th anniversary of D-day.  

I am grieved that the great democracy of America—perhaps the greatest nation to ever exist in the course of history—a nation that raised human rights and liberty to heights that ever existed, … has come to this point: Its long and honoured system of established legal jurisprudence rooted in more than 700 years of Anglo-American Common Law, was betrayed and sullied by Democrats for the sake of political gain to win the November presidential election. They and their liberal media propagandists, like (MSNBC and CNN and others) want to gleefully refer to Donald Trump as a “convicted felon”. In its bluntest terms, the Democrats have betrayed the high ideal of free and fair elections—and democracy itself. 

I believe that the hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers who gave up their lives in the Second World War would be appalled at what America is becoming (also Canada and Britain). America is slowly abandoning the towering and sacred principles that founded it. (The same is true for my nation of Canada.) 

Indeed, things may seem dire, but may I remind you of Winston Churchill’s immortal words on the eve of the Battle of Britain, for which so many Allied soldiers died:

“I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”[1]

 Those who still believe that Western Christian civilization with its laws, traditions, institutions, and mores—that raised human dignity to its greatest heights in history—must prepare to do battle! 

This new battle will not be fought with guns and blood, it will be a war of ideas, fought against moral corruption, pernicious philosophies and ideologies that turned against God and His blessings that America enjoyed for 248 years. America was the city of the hill, as Ronald Reagan so often called it, a beacon of freedom, justice and liberty for the world to see and emulate. 

In 1787, when the American Constitution was being signed, Benjamin Franklin turned toward the President’s chair. Behind it was a painting of a rising sun. He commented to a few members standing near him:

“I have often and often, in the course of the sessions, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looking behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length, I have the happiness to know. That it is rising, and not setting.”[2]

It is time, 237 years later, for Americans to look to the President’s chair once again, and decide if the sun is rising or setting on the United States. Who will sit there: Donald Trump or Joe Biden? There are only two choices. I believe that decision will determine whether the sun that rose on sunlit uplands of the United States of America will drag the nation into the abyss of a new Dark Age? 

With all his faults, and there are many, it will be Donald Trump who can avoid the abyss. The Democrats, their useful idiots and propagandists in the liberal media, and establishment élites are leading America toward it a New Dark Age. I believe the future of America looks stark unless She changes course. But change to what? Reach in your pocket, pull out a coin and read it: “In God We Trust”. There lies the answer in all places and all times. 

What shall it be? One nation under God, or one godless nation, as Joe Biden and a Congress dominated by Democrats will make America; the terrible abyss of a New Dark Age is not far away. The city on the hill will fade. America’s beacon of liberty will dim and then extinguish.

 You must decide! I believe the 2024 Presidential election will determine whether the great American experiment will live or die and whether that which America's Founders envisioned will fade into history. The people must decide. 

I believe that if you choose Joe Biden, America is doomed. The Democrats have special agendas they will inflict on the people (think Title IX, support for abortion up to the 9th month, willingness to stack the Supreme Court and return Roe v Wade, to mention just a few). The Democrats are leading the charge to the New Dark Age that Winston Churchill spoke about. At least Donald Trump is open to ideas that will make America great again. The truth will keep marching on be it good or bad. Click here. 

MDP

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[1] “THEIR FINEST HOUR”, International Churchill Society, https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/their-finest-hour/ , accessed from Internet 07 June 2024.

[2] “FRANKLIN ON THE CONSTITUTION, in READINGS IN WORLD HISTORY, ed. Leften S. Stavrianos, Loretta Kreider Andrews, George I. Blanksten, Paul L. Murphy, Lacey Baldwin Smith (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1962), p.258.