ON NOVEMBER 3RD, YOU MUST STAND FOR AMERICA!

 “Tonight, we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom—a cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.”—Ronald Reagan  1986, on the occasion of relighting the Statue of Liberty. 

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Dear American friends of this blog: When you go to the polls on November 3^rd, remember what made America great. It was your nation’s birth-right of optimism, patriotic values for family and community, one nation under God, that made America great. And those same values can make America great again. Historically, your nation believed in the American Dream where every citizen could rise to their aspirations with determination and hard work.  

Remember when communities were built not destroyed? Dare to believe that America build can again and be a beacon of freedom and liberty, just as Ronald Reagan believed. He saw the United States as a special place, “a shining city of a hill”—set by God between two oceans heralding a sacred call of human freedom and liberty for all the world to see and follow. It can be that way again.

 

America is at a pivotal crossroad.  Will it descend into a socialist/communist state under Biden and Harris? Don’t let that happen! Give Donald Trump a second term to usher America into new sunlit uplands of opportunity and potential. He’s setting the stage for America’s innate optimism and prosperity to blossom and flourish anew. Remember when that was a part of America’s culture and tradition of encouraging people to rise to their fullest potential? It can be again!  Just like Ronald Reagan before him, Donald Trump wants to rekindle a simple ideal: Free America from the shackles of big government. Restore American values and virtues of patriotism, family and community.

 

Donald Trump’s vision for America stands in stark contrast to how the leftists’ are replacing order and stability with disorder. They are spreading physical violence and bloodshed, destruction of property and communities. We have seen their vision for months playing out in street of cities across America. It is tolerated and even supported by the Democrats. But you must not! For the sake of all that is decent and good about America, return Donald J. Trump to the presidency to complete his task of truly making America Great Again.

I began this blog post with words of Ronald Regan 34 years ago, at the relighting if the Statue of Liberty. I believe that God has called President Trump to rekindle liberty itself across the nation. On November 3^rd, vote Donald Trump and let him complete his task.

 

May God bless America and President Trump. —Mark Davis Pickup

FROM PHYSICAL BROKENNESS CAN COME SPIRITUAL HEALING

God can use us in any circumstance in which we may find ourselves, even dire circumstances. Dire circumstances and pain are teachers, if we listen for God's voice. I have been chronically ill and physically disabled with severe multiple sclerosis for over 36 years—more than half of my life. Strangely, I have been more use to God disabled than I ever was able-bodied. It was at a certain point of disability and sorrow that I asked God what He wanted me to do? He led me to speak out across North America about disability inclusion and against an emerging cultural acceptance of euthanasia.

And so from 1994-2018 I spoke to anyone who would listen to what I had to say. I spoke to community groups, colleges and universities, politicians at provincial, state and federal levels, evangelical and Catholic groups, churches, medical professionals, disability organizations, legal organizations—literally anyone and any place that invited me. Unless speaking about public policy in government settings, I used every opportunity to witness for Christ. Today, I was sent a link to a 2016 presentation I gave in Ottawa, Canada, to the annual conference of the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF). They asked me to speak on the subject of "I AM MORE THAN MY DISABILITY." Click on image below. 

[NB: Notice the first inklings of my useless right hand awakening from MS paralysis.) I did not know then that a prayer not yet prayed was being answered ever so slowly. By 2019 I was walking after decades of paralysis in my legs, and regained full function of my right arm and hand.)

 

ALL CHRISTIANS ARE INDISPENSABLE TO THE BODY OF CHRIST

 

My devotion last night was 1 Corinthians 12.12-27. 

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Every believer has an indispensable role to play in God’s plan. You may not think so, but you do. Everyone has something, a role, a ministry, a talent, to offer in building the Church and spreading the Gospel. It may not be a front-line ministry, or in leadership but God has something He wants you to do. Perhaps your ministry does not win the applause of singers or musicians on stage each Sunday. Your contribution to the Kingdom of God might not receive resounding “Hallelujahs” of the congregation approval at the profundity of a speaker’s words. Your contribution may in fact be behind the scenes and out of the public eye. Perhaps a believer is a janitor and thinks he’s never even noticed.  But his supportive contribution is crucial to the operation of the church. 

I am reminded of the mayor of a major city who was being interviewed for a news story. The reporter referred to him as having the most important job in the city. The mayor stopped the reporter and said something to this effect: “Do you know who’s really important to the operations of this city? Garbage collectors. If I don’t come to work for a month it will scarcely be noticed. But if the garbage collectors don’t go to work, it will be noticed by everybody within a week.” Wow. He put things into perspective. 

Saint Andre Bessette (1845-1937) was a lay brother of Holy Cross in Montreal. He was plagued with poor health throughout his life. All he ever became was a porter at College Notre Dame in Côte des Neiges, Quebec. His lofty superiors did not see the holiness of the little brother in their midst. He was barely five feet tall, yet he was a spiritual giant. Despite being a porter for 40 years, his powerful prayers healed thousands of sick people. Word of his spiritual gift of healing became well known and crowds came to his door. Jealous superiors at in the Congregation of Holy Cross were sceptical and local doctors called him a “quack.” In the end, the humble little brother was receiving 80,000 letters a year and needed four secretaries to handle them. God puts us right where He wants us to serve the Kingdom of God.

It does not matter that your contribution to your church may seem inconsequential to you. It is not to God. It does not matter if others notice your offerings to God. He notices.

 

Don’t wish you were more talented or gifted in different areas than where you have been given a calling. That’s like a frog wishing he wasn’t green. God made you just as you are, and He has a purpose In His design for you. 

  

 

A GRANDFATHER'S LOVE IS FOREVER AND EVER

 One day, when my grandson was four years old, we were exploring nooks and crannies, playgrounds and trails, in our little town. Some dark clouds appeared so he climbed on my lap and we hurried home on my wheelchair just as it started to rain. He and I watched the Disney movie "Pooh's Grand Adventure." My little guy sat in a big comfy chair eating popcorn. He did not know his family was going to move away from Grandma and Papa’s little town. My heart was heavy. The song 'Forever and Ever' began to play and I got a lump in my throat. It made me sadder. I did not want him to move away but it had to be. The day he moved away was the same day my mother (his great-grandmother) died. I don’t think the world ever felt so lonesome as it did that day. I wanted to always call his name and hear his voice answer. It was not to be.

Now he has grown to be a man. But no matter where he goes in the world, he knows his Grandmother and I are still in our little house. A candle is always burning in the window for him and his younger siblings.

I am old now. Everything is simple again. Rhythms of life are becoming gentle, seasons pass and a nearby church bell still rings each day, just as it has for over a hundred years. Each night when I get into my bed and turn out the lamp, I still dream he, and my other grandchildren will come back to stay. And though it is unlikely, love for my family is forever and ever. -- MDP

HOW DID AMERICA GET IN THIS STATE WHERE SOCIALISM AND BIG GOVERNMENT IS PREFERRED TO DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM?

This post was written before the U.S. election. I have changed it to reflect what I believe America faces under the Biden/Harris administration.

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“He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent til after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt the whole world was condemned to a terrible strange new plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. So new microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became mad and furious. … Whole villages, whole towns went mad with the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at others, beat himself on the breast, wept and wrung his hands. They did not know how to judge and did not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other with a sort of senseless pite.”—Fydor Dostoevky, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.[1]

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A storm has been gathering on the horizon of America for quite some time. I’ve watched it slowly approaching. Dark clouds of rage and destruction have finally arrived. The threat it poses is more real and dangerous than any external enemy with bayonets storming the shores or intercontinental missiles pointed at America. The threat to American society is from within. This pernicious and malicious home-grown enemy is attacking the foundations of the nation from within, like a cancer. Young malcontents of anarchy— goaded by well-planned Marxists— vow to bring down the United States of America and replace freedom with a tyranny of the left. They are traitors! They are guilty of nothing less that treason, and they should receive a traitor’s punishment. 

 

Do not downplay or ignore the internal danger facing the United States of America. 

 

James Madison (1751-1836) was America’s fourth President and is often called the Father of the Constitution. He said, “If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.” His prophetic words speak across two hundred years to twenty-first century Americans. They are watching their cities burn, violence and bloodshed in streets, law and order collapse. Ugly images of streets littered with the shells of burnt out cars, smashed windows of looted gutted stores and businesses are becoming common, America’s flag burning and trampled underfoot.

 

This should prompt every American patriot into action to take back their country. Marxists and their dullard thugs-of-anarchy make their hundreds seem like thousands. They are wielding power far beyond their numbers, thanks to support and sympathies of Democratic politicians at federal, state and municipal levels. Patriotic citizens are frightened, and they should be. People of goodness feel impotent to stop the carnage, the threats to their safety, property and nation. 

 

Simply put, civilized society is disintegrating before your very eyes! But you must not let this happen! You must act from now until November 3^rd to keep the Democrats under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from taking the Presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate. It does not matter whether you have always voted for the Democrats, these Democrats are not the Democrats of John Kennedy. They are an aberration. You must not support them. 

 

It so frustrating to helplessly watch what occurring to my neighbours to the south. I am a foreigner, a nobody, witnessing the unravelling of a nation that I’m not a part of but have come to know and love. Since childhood, I’ve looked admiringly from the distant western Canadian hinterland to a glimmer of the great “shining city on a hill” lighting up sky for all to see.[2]  It is the light of freedom, optimism, and trust in God (as your coins so beautifully proclaim). The City has shimmered with patriotic loyalty, family values and interdependent communities. One nation under God made up of independent individuals within an interdependent whole: A people who historically looked to God for guidance. And for 244 years, God blessed America. 

 

Founded on a Judeo-Christian moral ethos, it has been a sacred nation set between two oceans, a beacon to the world for human potential and freedom. But now that shining light appears to be dimming, its flame no longer dancing—it is flickering unsteadily in winds of discontent. What happened? Will the light of liberty be extinguished in the months and years after November? I think I know what happened. 

 

After the Second World War people began to slowly turn away from God. They began to put their trust in themselves and things, treasures of earth rather than that which is treasured in heaven. It didn’t happen suddenly. It happened in small increments. Little bit by little bit, one small shift after another, the great nation under God began to lose its way. Gradually the dividends of a Judeo-Christian moral and spiritual consensus faded. Where were Christians? They made a fatal mistake of seeing things in bits and pieces rather than part of a whole. Yes, Christians were concerned about the breakdown of the family, rising rates of divorce, pushing God out of schools, increasing moral permissiveness and pornography, abortion and more recently, legalized euthanasia. Each shift took people further away from a Judeo-Christian moral mindset that viewed humanity as intrinsically valuable because every human being was endowed with the indelible image of God. As such, they possessed a natural dignity and sacredness. Things or actions or behavior that did not square with those virtues were discouraged or prohibited. Not everyone was Christian but at least they vaguely ascribed to that national ethos because it was embraced goodness and reflected an objective truth about human dignity and sanctity. A belief in the sanctity of essential things like human life and marriage and family were generally accepted by all but a few kooks and provocateur philosophers trying to gain notoriety.  That is no longer the case. We have three generations inculcated with the false idea there is no such thing as absolute truth, only personal relative truth, thanks, in large part, the twentieth century educational reformer to John Dewey.[3]

 

In Nancey R. Pearcey’s pivitol book TOTAL TRUTH: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Roots (Crossway Books), she spoke about John Dewey’s disastrous effect on education: 

 

“John Dewey did more to shape educational methodology than anyone else in the twentieth century.Dewey is the source of much of today’s moral education, where all values are treated as equally valid and students clarify what they value most. … Any value that students choose is deemed acceptable, whether or not it comports with accepted moral standards, as long as they have gone through the prescribed series of steps. Why? Because, as one textbook puts it, “None of us can be certain that our values are right for other people.” Each individual has become an autonomous decision maker, determining his values strictly on his own.”

 

What we have/are witnessing in the streets with BLM, antifa anarchists (blessed by the Democratic Party) is relativistic morality gone amuck! Today’s young hooligans tearing up America is the reductio ad absurdum of having trampling Judeo-Christian morality underfoot three generations ago. There is no transcendent universal truth. The only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. Might makes right. What’s right is whatever is deemed to be right by the most powerful and whatever is fashionably in season at any given time. Right now, the mantra is America bad, communism good. Everybody is being encouraged to “reimagine” America with no police. Imagine the world with no American way, established ideals, capitalism, no private property. In short, “reimagine America as a Marxist state”—the first step of which was the election of the left’s useful idiot Joe Biden.  

 

We must not overlook that seventy-five years ago, almost everyone knew the what the Ten Commandments were. They may not have been Christian, but they knew what they were. Granted, people did not always behave accordingly but they knew in their hearts-of-hearts it was the basis for proper moral behaviour. Most people desired and tried—however uncertain and haltingly—to live by that ancient moral code. They understood there is something called truth and that it simply existed. Their hearts and their consciences verified it.[4]

 

The Judeo-Christian moral ethos was brought from Northern European Christian culture. The Common Law of western civilization (so despised by the radical left) raised human rights, education, law, culture and mores to heights previously unknown in human history. Anglo-American Common law has Christianity at its foundations. In 1829, in his inaugural address as Dane professor of law of Harvard University, Joseph Story[5] said, “There has never been a period in which Common Law did not recognize Christianity as laying at its foundation.”[6] Until the post-world war generations leading up to today, Western Civilization was viewed as worth defending to the point of death. And it was defended. Hundreds of thousands of mostly men did just that.[7]

On the Eve of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill rose in Parliament and stated, 

 

“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 continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.” He went on urge the British people that they must defeat Hitler. If they succeeded, all Europe would be free. Then the great man warned: “But if we fail, 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, … .”[8]

 

I believe there are similarities between that fateful time and what America faces now. Under the Democrats, America’s great institutions and Empire will be weakened or dismantled. Creeping socialism will overshadow democracy. A terrible disfigurement has begun under Biden/Harris  The greatest nation on earth will be twisted into a socialist state based upon Marxism. Strangely, just as Founding Father James Madison stated, America will be taken over from within. It's being done by leftists, Marxists, and anarchists who have formed an unholy alliance with the Democratic Party. 

 

It’s coming into focus: The undoing of the United States of America will not be by some external enemy storming America’s shores with guns and bayonets, or missiles pointed at the heart of the nation. This enemy is within by treacherous citizens! 

MDP  

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[1] Fyodor Dostoevsky, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (New York: Random House, 1956) pp. 489-490. 

[2] Ronald Reagan often called America a shining city on a hill.

[3] … Dewey is the source of much of today’s moral education, where all values are treated as equally valid and students clarify what they value most. … Any value that students choose is deemed acceptable, whether or not it comports with accepted moral standards, as long as they have gone through the prescribed series of steps. Why? Because, as one textbook puts it, “None of us can be certain that our values are right for other people.” Each individual has become an autonomous decision maker, determining his values strictly on his own.”

 

[4] Psalm 40.8, Jeremiah 31.33, Ezekiel 11.19-20, 36.26, Hebrews 8.10.

[5] Joseph Story (1779-1845) American lawyer and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1812-1845.

[6] Quoted in Perry Miller, editor, The Legal Mind in America (New York: Doubleday, 1962), p. 178.

[7] According to the National WW2 War Museum in New Orleans: In the Second World War, Allied Soldiers who died by country: U.S.- 416,800, British- 386,600, Canada- 45,000, Australia- 39,800. These numbers for only World War. See https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/institute-study-war-and-democracy

 

[8] Winston S. Churchill, MEMOIRS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR: An Abridgement of the six volumes of The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987) p. 326.

I LET THE HUMBLE SWEET PEA SPEAK

August is a gift. My wife's sweet peas (and other flowers) in our backyard are in full bloom. LaRee knows they are my favourite flower (they are her's too.) She picks them and puts them in vases and jars throughout our house. Their beautiful pastel colours and sweet scent fill the rooms just as they do to the warm fresh air in the yard.

The humble sweet pea has much to teach me about life (if I allow them to speak to me). God can, if I let Him, use a flower to teach me about His nature through nature. He is, after all, the Creator of it all. Case in point: A bouquet of simple sweet peas shows me that simple beauty is the best beauty. That is a truth about most of life. Simple love is the best love.  Sadly, people rush about their busy lives oblivious to God's wisdom to be found in a lowly sweet pea or countless wild flowers growing along roads and walking trails. People quickly drive or walk by them without a thought about the wisdom and beauty to be found in a flower's simpleness. (The same is true of quietude.) 

Twenty-first century people do not tend to value simpleness. They pervert simple beauty into gaudy, vulgar counterfeits of beauty. They take simple pure love and twist it into something ugly by unfaithfulness, betrayal, lust and all sorts of deviations from pure simple love. They change pure love into something unworthy of the word pure or love—and a thousand miles from the Creator of love.

And yet, when all the deviations and complications of life are stripped away — as coronavirus may yet do to you and me — it becomes clear that it was only simple beauty and simple love that mattered all along! 

Isn't that part of the charm of babies? Their simple innocent beauty and openness to love calls you and me to remember our own early beautiful innocence and openness to love that was source of our joy. Joy is so natural to babies and tiny children but later is driven away when their hearts become broken, jaded, or cynical. Hearts hardened by betrayal, jealousy, selfishness or disappointment with life can only remember and experience faint momentary inklings of real Joy. Otherworldly Joy of God is a distant memory of earliest childhood.

That's why I think that sweet peas and tiny babies still call you and me back to the purity of simple beauty and simple love. That is where authentic Joy is to be found, It can be a constant state of being for hearts at peace with God though His Son Jesus Christ. 

Let the COVID lockdown be a time to quiet your heart and search for God. He is near and He cares for you and me.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life or what you will eat, or about your your body and what you will wear. For your life is more than food and the body more than clothing. ... Notice how the flowers grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of them. If God clothes the grass that grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not provide much more for you, O you of little faith." —Jesus Christ, (Luke 12.22-23, 27-28.)

MDP

AMERICA AT THE ABYSS

The following video was sent to me by Facebook.  It speaks to America about the horribly high stakes of the November election. It calls the nation to a national day prayer 40 days before election day. I urge you to watch it. What is at state this election is nothing less that the heart and soul of America. 

You know which party stands against biblical values and against a Christian world view. Christianity lies at the foundations of America. Please see the video here: "The Return." (There are forces at work to silence any call to repentance, including blocking this video. You may find that it's censored and unavailable when you try the link.) 

It is a critically important message to the nation for a spiritual and moral about-face, in what people of previous times called revival. And it is something that has weighed heavy on my heart. Thirteen years ago I wrote these words for the cover for this blog:

“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?” 

America now stands at the edge of that abyss of that New Dark Age; Joe Biden and the Democrats will bring it to America. But there is still hope: National Christian revival. God's people must witness to their neighbours and other fellow-citizens about God's love for them and encourage them to give their lives to Jesus Christ. Spiritual awakening!

Look at a coin. What does it say? "In God We Trust." In your hand lies the answer to America's future prosperity and happiness.

MDP