ESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN GROWTH OF TAKING UP YOUR CROSS

 

My wife and I spoke to Edmonton’s Catholic Renewal Services group. They are affiliated with the Charismatic Renewal movement. They are on fire for the Lord. My wife and I loved them! 

 

We sang songs of praise to God, we prayed, had breakfast together, laughed and fellowshipped together. The presence of the Holy Spirit filled the room. 

 

When it came time for us to speak, LaRee and I shared our life story which included abortion, post-abortion grief, acquiring serious degenerative disability and the fears (sometimes downright terror) that comes with it. We spoke about a journey that began with sin and broken hearts, anger with life and God, then gradually moved toward acceptance, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. It was only then, with God’s tender leading, that we began to receive a renewed understanding about life, love (both human and divine), and something about what our Lord meant by taking up our cross daily (Luke 9.23). It was not an easy presentation because it required us to be vulnerable and brutally honest ― but we were among Christian friends. 

 

This is not unique to us. Everyone must take up a cross of one sort or another. Sometimes it is obvious to other people and sometimes it is not. But each of us is called to take up our cross and carry it. In his classic Christian book The Imitation of Christ, the fifteenth century priest Thomas à Kempis wrote about the universal calling of taking up one’s cross: “No man’s heart can experience what Christ endured in His passion except the man who suffered as he did. ... The cross is, therefore, always in readiness for you and everywhere awaits you. Wherever you choose to run you will not escape it because you always take yourself with you and you will always find yourself.” 

 

Taking up your cross will turn you toward your interior self. It is a critically important decision you must make every day. Taking up your cross involves the essential work of Christian growth. The daily struggle and suffering under the weight of your cross is where personal purification occurs. Bearing the cross requires you to chastise your will and body and bring them into subjection of God. It is not easy but it is necessary. Like I say, it requires work and suffering. Some people will refuse the cross ― but they can not escape it. As Thomas à Kempis reminds us, the cross is always before us and waiting because we cannot escape ourselves. 

 

The sick or disabled must face and accept their affliction. The lonely must face their loneliness; their cross may change it to sweet solitude.  The addict must face his addiction demons. Bearing the cross may be different for each person, but they must face it, and face it each day. In extreme cases, they must decide every hour to take up their cross. 

 

What’s your cross? Don’t be surprised that it requires suffering (emotional, spiritual or physical). Suffering can have a refining effect as with gold in fire. Saint Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he considered ^ “the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” Later in 2 Corinthians he reflected, “^ For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,^ as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.”

 

For those who allow the cross to conform them to Christ crucified, they will find it is the way that leads to the Kingdom of God.  

 

A consolation of the cross you take up is that Christ will walk with us under its weight. Your individual cross – no matter how onerous or burdensome it may be – is never heavier that the cross  Christ endured. Remember that you are not alone. Christ is there just as He has been with Christians throughout history who took up their crosses. 

 

If we unite our lesser sufferings with Christ’s Passion , crucifixion and Resurrection, we will discover a strange yet wonderful internal transformation is beginning to occur that's drawng us closer to Christ and away from ourselves. 

 

 

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FEAR HAS BEEN A TERRIBLE MOTIVATION IN MY LIFE

https://youtube.com/shorts/8BryvILG1MQ?feature=share

EVERYONE IS AFRAID

 

I read about a young man paralyzed in a freak accident. The story gave a glimpse of his grief and sorrow. The terrible prospect of permanent disability is beginning to sink in and it's breaking his heart. He told the reporter, "It's really, really hard." And so it is. Life with catastrophic disability is a hard journey. I know, I've lived with degenerative multiple sclerosis for over 40 years. Unexpectedly, yet wonderfully, God lifted my paralysis in 2018 and I stood and walked away from my electric wheelchair. The Holy Spirit told me not to forget how deep my sorrow, fears, and sense of isolation became in my grieving physical loss. He sis not take away the MS, my brain is riddled with plaque (the scler in sclerosis). 

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

Disability is a lonesome journey. It's not that friends are unkind - just hard to find. Then there are those dreaded moments at the end of each evening and one must make his way to the terror of the bedroom. It's in there that darkness awaits to engulf a grieving person in fitful sleep-wake torture. A chorus of despair, self-doubts and fear whisper, "You are alone. Nobody understands." 

It is there, in the middle of an endless night, lying wide-awake staring into darkness, that a bed can become a rack. 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. 

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 tell 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 circumstances and the abyss of intense grief and rise to incredible spiritual heights and human achievements-sometimes in spite of their disabilities and sometimes because of their disability. 

Transcending disability

Perhaps the most famous example is Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827). Most of his vast contributions to the world of music were written in either partial or complete deafness. 

George Frederic Handel (1685-1759) suffered from manic depression (what we now call bipolar). 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 crippled from polio at the age of 39, yet as America's 32nd president he led an entire nation through most of the Great Depression and the Second World War. 

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 of being seen as extreme yet afraid to venture outside mediocrity. 

But there is a question that has always been deep within you that must be asked. What is within you and I that can help us to transcend ourselves from fear to live a life of purpose and serve God?

Mark Davis Pickup

THEIR BABY WAS CONCEIVED IN LOVE, ... OR SO SHE THOUGHT

 

She laid in her bedroom stunned at what her boyfriend said. He had told her he loved her and now she was carrying their baby inside her. She didn’t understand his coldness. Their baby was conceived in love ... or so she thought. Although they were only eighteen, she wanted to get married and raise their child. He wanted her to have an abortion so he could party with his friends.  Alone, unsupported and emotionally abandoned by her boyfriend, condemned by his mother, and her grandmother pushing her toward the abortionist, she gave in and aborted their baby. Six months later they broke up and she moved back east. Little did they know that was not the end of their story—not by a long shot!

Mark Davis Pickup

(A scene depicted from my screenplay TRANSCEND: A Journey Toward Love. See the screenplay website here )

CHRISTMAS WITH AN EMPTY MANGER

Years ago, my town held a community church Christmas concert at the local catholic church. Outside in the chilly winter weather was a nativity scene. Inside was garland, ribbons, another nativity scene, poinsettia’s, candles and a general reverence for the Advent Season. I specifically remember a young woman from the Pentecostal church singing a beautiful rendition of “O Holy Night.” 

 O Holy night! The stars are brightly shining 

 It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth 

Then we were in for a real treat! A hefty woman from the apostate United Church of Canada (UCC) came sliding across the front of the church, snapping her finger to the beat of the music, and delivered an off-key version of “Rockin’ around The Christmas Tree.” 

Rockin' around the Christmas tree 

At the Christmas party hop 

Mistletoe hung where you can see, Every couple tries to stop. 

When Rotunda finished, she took a bow and scampered away whispered to herself, “Nailed it!” The over-crowded church sat in stunned silence at the spectacle they just witnessed. What was that? A comedy routine? I whispered to my wife, “United Church theology.” 

SAD LEGACY

There was a time when the United Church of Canada was the largest Protestant denomination in Canada. But beginning in the heady 1960s, they decided to try and be relevant and hip, abandoning the uncompromising Gospel of Jesus Christ for liberal trendy tolerant worldviews. They became tolerant to the point of tolerating sin, then accepting it, then celebrating it. The pews emptied. 

Now the UCC is just a sad relic; they are little more than a secular organization—like a social club cloaked in religious vestments. Ironically, they sought to be relevant and became irrelevant. 

The fact is that people do not need soft soap and the tasteless gruel of a liberal social gospel devoid of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is God made man, fully human yet fully divine, the only Messiah and Redeemer of the human race. When individuals surrender their lives to God’s will, repent of their sins through faith in Jesus Christ and cleansed by His blood shed at Calvary, they find unspeakable peace, joy and purpose.  

DOESN'T FIT THE NARRATIVE

But this doesn’t fit with liberal woke narratives dating back to the 1960s. The United Church of Canada (and other liberal denomination) abandoned crucial tenets of Christianity such as the biblical creation account, the miracles, the Virgin birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (except in some metaphorical sense) and the inerrancy of scripture as our final authority in all matters of faith and conduct. 

Their clergy have even denied our Lord’s unequivocal words: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14.6). This is so offensive to the United Church of Canada (and many other liberal Protestant churches)! It offends  because of the exclusivity of Christ’s claim. In the Book of Acts, Saint Peter says the same thing about Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:11-12.) 

Jesus is the only way to God, not a way. This is untenable to liberals—there must be many ways to heaven. Christ and the Apostle were not inclusive according to post-modern liberal sensibilities and that is utterly unacceptable. 

Now they come to Christmas. How do liberal churches, like the United Church of Canada, face the truth that the timeless One entered time when they have denied Him, His power over life and death and the foundations of Christianity?  Over the past 70 years they have chosen comfort over the Truth. Their manger is empty.

Pray the blinders be removed from those who have compromised the Christian faith or abandoned it completely and come back to Christ and His holiness and seek to become more like Him. 

MDP

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with, and in the end, despair.” — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

CANADA'S WAR ON CHRISTIANS

 

I am old enough to remember a previous Christian moral consensus that governed western culture for hundreds of years. It was the foundation of the family and the community.  It was a time when most people knew the 10 commandments. They may not have followed them, but they knew they should have. That has all been swept away. We are entering the cruel rock-hard edge of a New Dark Age.

That former Christian ethos can still be reclaimed and restored against its enemies, whether it be in the halls of power, on the streets of our nation, or standing against unbiblical leaders in our churches seduced by the spirit of the age.

My country of Canada is anti-Christian. What are Christ’s followers to do? Remain faithful to Him and the holy Scriptures, even in the face of withering opposition. Ultimately, there is no neutral ground between truth and falsehood, right or wrong, good and evil. Christ IS the Truth (John 14.6). Remember, He warned His followers, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” (John 15.18.) The servant is not greater than the Master (John 13.16).

The Truth of Jesus Christ and the previous Christian moral ethos is being actively and intentionally swept away from the public square and public discourse. Civil society is not civil when it comes to Christians. The common good is not common. Christians are decried and despised in politics and the media.

Canada has replaced the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob with a brutal liberal God of nihilism, perversion and corruption. A grotesque and secular new entity has emerged that pays to kill unborn children, the sick, the disabled, denies natural sexual order, natural law and burns down Christian churches.

Christians of various denominations must come together to stop this new and deviant version of Canada that has emerged. It is no time to be docile or timid! Stand up for all that sacred and good, beautiful and true. What is source of goodness, beauty and truth? Jesus Christ!

Mark 

 

ANTI-DISABILITY BIAS IN CANADA

 

Krista Carr is the Executive Vice President and CEO of Inclusion Canada.  Inclusion Canada is a national federation of 300 local and 13 Provincial/Territorial Associations working on behalf of approximately 1 million Canadians with a developmental disability and their families. Ms. Carr recently appeared before a parliamentary committee on The Status of Persons with Disabilities. Committee member and MP Garnett Genuis asked Ms. Carr about disabled Canadians’ fear of seeking ordinary medical treatment. They fear (and quite rightfully) Canada's assisted suicide law (euphemistically referred to as Medical Assistance in Dying MAiD). Carr informed the committee of health care providers suggesting MAiD, under track 2 of the legislation.[1] Genuis asked how often she encounters this? She said “weekly.” 

More than 90,000 people have been killed under MAiD. It now accounts for 1 in 20 deaths in Canada.

This is just the natural of post-Hippocratic medicine. That ancient Oath (dating back to the fifth Century BC) forbade assisted suicide (and abortion). It said:

“I will do no harm or injustice to them [patients]. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.”

Awkward …! Modern medicine does all of this stuff—so they revised the wisdom of antiquity for a new revised version. The new revised Hippocratic Oath was removed any reference to helping people killing themselves or abortion. It's name should be the Hypocritical Oath.

I witnessed this anti-disability bigotry amongst Canadian medical professionals more than 30 years ago when I was a member of the ethics committee for the University of Alberta Hospital. When I joined the committee in 1992, as their community/disability representative, I was in an electric wheelchair (multiple sclerosis). My chair stuck out like a sore thumb for other members of the ethics committee. My wheelchair was my credential. In the early years, medical professionals sitting around the table were very good at treating patients with disabilities with the same respect and protocols that everyone else received. 

In 1995, a case came before the committee about a young man, Terry Urquhart. He had Down Syndrome. He was denied admission on to the lung transplant list because of a hospital policy that only persons of “reasonable intelligence” could be considered for transplantation. transplant list.  

His tenacious parents would not accept that answer, but the hospital was firm. They did exactly what any good parent would do: They took the story to the media. They got friends to protest outside the hospital. Disability organizations lobbied on Terry’s behalf. The Chair on the ethics committee was visibly agitated. Reporters wanted to talk to him. I asked if the hospital really had a policy excluding people with Down Syndrome from receiving organ transplantation. They admitted it. My response was blunt: “Then we deserve every lump of bad publicity and public scorn we get.” Eventually the hospital caved to the embarrassment of such a discriminatory policy and public pressure that Terry got his lung transplant.[2]

The hospital eventually caved and Terry got his much needed lung transplant. I was shocked at how many Albertans the transplant. 

A number of Albertans felt that Terry’s transplant was a “waste” and organs should go to more “productive” members of society. Some radio phone-in callers said they were considering tearing up their organ donor cards because of the hospital’s decision. It was yet another indication how low people with disabilities are held in certain quarters.

During my twelve years on the university hospital ethics committee, I noticed a hardening of medical professionals on the committee toward care of severely disabled patients. Things that previous went unspoken or whispered just out of my earshot were openly said to my face. Hostility toward the disabled was overtly expressed. Parents of a little boy born with a severe disability who required a major procedure (I can’t remember the details) was an example. The background information about the case indicated the child was happy and came from a supportive and loving family. A senior doctor on the committee objected to this assertion and said the parents were actually abusive! I asked her where she got such an idea. She glared at with eyes cold as ice, and said, “They are abusive because they agreed to treatment when he was born.” Despite the report stating the child was happy and had a good family, the doctor rejected it because of her own anti-disability bias.

Fast forward to 2025. Euthanasia/assisted suicide have been legal in Canada since 2016. What was sold as an option for dying people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable” was just the beginning—the thin edge of a deadly wedge. In 2021, a second phase began that removed the criteria of death being “reasonably foreseeable.” The cross-hairs shifted to Canada’s disabled in what is known as track 2 of MAiD. We are waiting for the jaws of MAiD to widen widely again in 2027 to include people whose sole condition is mentally ill and suicidal. Barbarism!

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[1] Track 2 of MAiD is specifically targeted at people with disabilities that are not terminal. This is the distinguishing factor between track 1 and track 2. Track 1 requires a person’s illness or disability to have a death in the foreseeable future. Track 2 is for non-terminable people with disabilities. An AI search of track 2 MAiD states that individual eligibility criteria is for:

 

“… [I]ndividuals whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable: They must be at least 18, eligible for Canadian public healthcare, and have a grievous and irremediable medical condition. This includes having a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability that is in an advanced state of irreversible decline and causes unbearable suffering. A voluntary, informed request is required, and two independent practitioners must perform the assessments, which includes consultation with a specialist if needed. While the eligibility assessment period is typically at least 90 days, it can be shortened if the person's capacity is at risk of being lost.” 

 

In 2027, MAiD will be offered to mentally ill Canadians who are suicidal. That’s how stone-hearted Canada’s governing Liberal Party has become. 

 

 

[2] “Disabled boy gets transplant, The Interim magazine, 29 April 1995.