Quit while you are ahead is good advice especially for people stirring the word command into their positive thinking recipe. More precisely covenant is so far removed from what God wants it is amazing that people still think of Christ’s mission as being a covenant into which we enter with him: him and us having our assignments. We do this even after we say we have considered the history and success of covenants, especially the Sinai (Old or First) Covenant. The Lord has seen fit to establish the Messianic Grace Covenant apart from the terms and processes of Sinai. Sinai contains nine prohibitions and one injunction – honour your parents. The source for positive thinking is neither Moses, nor Solomon so be prepaed to defend the ragged, rugged rage of self-righteousness.

The Ten Commandments are not Positive

Instead of riches from God’s eternal treasury we find ourselevs trying to reinvent the joy of salvation, the success of the covenant, and the guarantee of promised inheritance. It is all rags. The Book of Proverbs has 46 negative commands (AL +VERB). That amounts for 1.48 commands per chapter, (148%), more of the same type than Exodus (8 hits, 20%) or Leviticus (7 hits, 25%).

Try as we might, every day has evil that touches us – unless we are cloistered behind walls of seld-denial and sectarian indoctrination. We cannot think away the events and conditions that God has designated to bring us to stabler lives and maturity. We should not be surprised that Solomon conducted his life opposite his voluminous warnings and commands. The Law of Moses served a Covenant – not God’s will. God’s will demanded a body, a spotless body, and ending one or many behaviours does not make any human a candidate for doing God’s will. There is no need to be angry with God, sinners, or yourself. God has forgiven you everything.

Remember Mary of Magdala, how she was denonized repeatedly, but kept coming to the Anointed, who honoured her with making her the first to see him glorified and made her the first bearer of resureection good news to the disciples.

We have long asked why democracies have prided themselves on having opposition benches.   Tell me why Canadians have not deserved a coming together of all elected MPs to work for the projects that have our consensus by majority. 

On hearing the Hon. Andrew Scheer slander the PM at the outset of the debates in the last election my conviction that a house divided falls was renewed.  Canadians know an American-wannabe when they see a party that in this day and age puts the 1% and their agenda above the needs of Canadians and especially our First Nations, even when the party has a plank touting the needs of Canadian “families”.  The Canadian and US political systems are based on Britain’s.  They have a misguided view that they can imitate God, who allows the devil to run around and stir up trouble.

He ain’t heavy when not constructive

People who take their function as political opposition seriously have no idea what they are going to choke on.  They can become utterly useless when the nation’s progress is forced into a back seat and the fortunes of a party that failed at the polls can make points about how poorly the government is doing.  Let’s remember the huge interpersonal and international (there were nations in this land when Èuropeans arrived) blunders made by the founders of our country, the decades of failing to see people as people, and bring to the front the community we know we have to be to survive the onslaught of imperialism, colonialism, and corporate and personal greed.

Let’s remember to speak and act with kindness, and be ready to forgive. Strangely though, in the spiritual universe Satan gets no forgiveness. He spent so much time seeking to unseat his monarch if the universe that we can try to understand why he gets his just desserts. Slander is the middle name of anyone taking the opposition role seriously. Diabolic fits the opposition’s modus operand. Even when false and demeaning the opposition’s missiles hide behind parliamentary tradition so Scheer can lobby for the question period circus and get air time to show how slanderous and corrupt his party has become, offering alternate data and spoiling for a fight, all the while professing to be on Team Canada. If Scheer or any of our leaders said openly he is testing the potus45 playbook Canadians will never forgive him. For everything else he is not heavy.

Power to think does not mean safe choices. When martial law says I must die or submit to decree that designates where my loyalty and allegiance must lie the choice is between God and creature. Not many are equipped to wrestle with the options presented.

If there is going to be government enforcement of an allegiance test in my lifetime I want to be found in the likeness of Caleb and Joshua, saying no to a generation that refused to believe. I belong to a generation that woke up to British colonialism five decades ago and since then the wide lanes of the road to ruin have not seemed less attractive than they do today. My hat is on a high peg because my ancestors have been pioneers of greatness and integrity. I want to take my cues from two sources when martial law says I must die or submit to decree that designates where my loyalty and allegiance must lie. As long as protest and civil disobedience are possible I will let the daughters of Joseph and the three Hebrew boys light my way.

Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 9) he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 10)

Rev 14

Life, not merely livelihood, is at stake.  Eternal life is not at risk. If we know where Caesars exercise authority we are safe. Since we know the prince of the kings of the earth let us stand as God’s house.

15) And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 16) And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead,

Rev 13

The irreverent are afraid. The leaders of the commercial world are terrified at the prospect of executions producing heroes and the chaotic speculation about what the worship, image and mark of the beast are continues to deepen.