Canada 150 - Remembering Our Christian Heritage that We Forgot

Our dog is being bred with another dog named Dragon.  Surprise, surprise.  She doesn't want to go near "Dragon"!  Maybe next time we'll try her with a dog with a less dark and scary name. Incredibly, they are doing artificial insemination with our dog - I can hardly believe this is even an option for dogs.  I will be absolutely amazed  if this all goes as we hope.

I think I'm becoming a tourist attraction.  I'm quite convinced people now drive by hoping that they'll see a cow out followed immediately by the farmer's wife waving her hands and running towards said beast.  If only my city friends could see me now.....We thought we had the fence fixed, but yesterday morning, there they were again....3 of them, just meandering near my garden, quite happy with themselves it seemed.  There was the car on the road, slowly driving by...quite amazed that these huge beasts were out of their fenced area.  There I was, running towards the cows, smiling at the driver, as if this were normal, and yelling at the cows to get in.....I'm sure the car will drive by today hoping for another show.  But, last night, for sure, we hope, this time, we think, the fence is fixed. The only show I want to see is those darn cows getting zapped.

Now, it is June.  No one wants to do school on the best of days, but when June hits, it's even harder. Thank goodness for "Showcase".  This is what motivates my kids to keep going.  It's an opportunity for me to do one more big project with the kids that is kind of like their "end-of-year" project. Usually we put a big bulletin board together of a major thing they've worked on or learned about all year, but this year, I was having a hard time deciding what to display.  Then it occurred to me....this year is Canada's 150th, why not do a major project on that?  I knew there would be a ton of resources on-line, especially for teachers, but then I remembered something I had heard on Friday while I was driving in the car.  Canada has an amazing history, but very few realize that its original roots are Christian and based on the Bible!

This idea came into my my mind because of a message I heard on Friday by one of our favourite Canadian apologist/evangelists who is Canadian and has his own radio show called The Cross Current.  He teaches at the Worldview Camp my kids go to each summer and we've come to really appreciate what he's all about.  (Just as an aside, this guy, Cory McKenna, is planning a huge outreach to Canadians this Canada Day in Ottawa.  Our kids want to go.  We'll see how it all turns out...) Anyway, the reason I mention this is because on his radio broadcast this month he is regularly teaching about Canada's Christian heritage.  Once I heard him mention that on the radio, I knew that was what I wanted my kids' project to be about - showing the other homeschoolers who might not even know this side of Canada (as it is in no textbooks).

Cory had also mentioned in his radio program on Friday how Israel's history is very similar to Canada's history.  I took a closer look at it when I got home and this will be one of our displays, comparing the two countries.  The people of Israel and Canada were both given beautiful land described in Deut. 8 as "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land who stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper."  Ok, maybe we don't have olives, figs and pomegranates, but everything else sounded a lot like Canada!

Both Israel and Canada had godly leaders, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Not perfect, but for the most part, following God's laws.  Canada, too, had godly leaders.  These leaders were given a warning for all future nations, like Canada, in Deut. 8, "Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His rules and His statutes, which I command you today....And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish."  Israel was supposed to pass these warnings on to the following generations, so they set up memorial stones, 12 of them, so that they wouldn't forget. Canada did the same by having Scripture etched in stone in government buildings.  One of the founding fathers, Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, was a Christian man who read his Bible every day and prayed.  One morning, in the mid 1800s, he was reading in Psalm 72 and he came across verse 8, "May He have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth!"   He immediately knew that was what Canada needed to be named, "The Dominion of Canada".  All 33 founding fathers agreed.  The phrase from "sea to sea" ended up etched in stone for Canada's coat of arms as well as for our motto.  Later on, the coat of arms had another phrase put on it from Hebrews 11:16, "they desire a better country".  Incredible.

But, as I read in Isaiah 1 yesterday, almost to confirm the state of affairs of Canada and so many other nations in the world, Israel forgot to pass on God's laws.  God says in Isaiah 1, "Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me...A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly!  They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.....Your country lies desolate."  What a perfect description of these lands who knew God's laws at one time, but then forgot.  We actually read the statistics of Canada and how since the government leaders have taken God out of, well, everything, violence has gone up exponentially, divorce, single parents, suicide....you name it, all the worst of the worst, is even worse.  How can that be coincidence?  Even the first explorers, upon arriving here, saw how the first nations people did not know God and were determined to make Him known, but the history books only tell of disease that they brought instead.

So, as Romans says, God "gives them over" to their sins.  We are left with a country that is in a bad state of affairs.  Seems hopeless.  However, Cory is determined to get Canadian Christians to share their faith in Go Share Canada 150.  He's trying to get as many churches involved as he can to get as many people sharing their faith as he can, trying to get God back in the culture.  Our kids will be writing about ways this can be done by getting Christians, like our local Christian mpp, in politics or law or medicine....taking back the land for Christ.  God says at the end of chapter one in Isaiah, "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:  though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool, If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."  There is hope for Canada, if we heed God's warning, but there is still a very loud warning, "you shall be eaten by the sword."  Yikes, that's no light consequence.  Yet we see it all the time....all you have to do is turn on the news daily, or even, hour by hour, to see what a mess our world is in and how we are literally being eaten by the sword.

I pray that our showcase this year will be more than just a little project that my kids and I pulled together, but instead that it will inspire other Christians who see it to come together and bring God and His Laws back to our country.