Safety

Where else does the arms and legs of state get disconnected?

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An excruciatingly long suspension of answers on demand punctuated the usual Texan pride in the mechanics of law and order.  When judges, safety officers, and heads of state try to excuse their lack of literacy by acting out against the vulnerable and defenseless we knew the day when the plug gets pulled on all of them could not be far. The Uvalde, Texas, police department, at least, should have been fired a long time ago.

Send more officers with spines

“More” is becoming a discredited response to recurring problems.  What government officials need is not more staff and more equipment.  We do need more critics, reports and commissions of inquiry. The world only needs more disciplined, energetic, fearless, generous, and honest officials.

It is too bad governors and military types are not always equipped with hearts and minds tuned to the people they are supposed to serve.  Increasingly the people in civilized society are getting more leaders who are woefully uninformed about what public service is. 

Murdering Mullahs and cowardly rangers

From the mullahs to the sherriffs in rural America there are fewer  discernible links between the safety people deserve and what they actually experience. We should not be surprised that violence is the answer to the cry of Iranian women for relief from the decrees of religious extremists, telling them what to wear and how to wear it. Thank God, the mullahs and their supporters can now conclude that the minds of the Iranian people are not the property of Islamic scholars and misogynist theoreticians.

Massacre with hundreds of safety officers on site

The world has seen what safety officers may have as their priority when prescribed actions are called for when a known massacre of preteen children in their classrooms at school is in progress a dozen or two steps away. We shall soon discover what the ruthless governor of Texas calls justice.

Ontario’s furious Ford

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Mr. Ford, failing to take a hard line to protect Ontarians, and ordering unadvised extreme actions he has had to walk back, keeps blaming the Federal government for problems at the Canada-US border. Truth be told, our Premier has not kept the vulnerable safe, has not convinced Ontarians to follow the science or even to follow stay-home guidance within municipal boundaries. “What gives?”, indeed. We are not that blind. We see the fear of irresponsible and vocal commercial actors. We feel the outbreaks at factories and the numewrous attempts by partygoers to ignore the pandemic. We hear the ongoing threats of antivax protests, and the imaginary dust-up between provincial and federal governments about vaccine supply and the international border is a fury that may continue until someone catches the Premier voicing his other views.

Premier Ford, losing the grip on the hearts of Ontario’s residents, needs to keep his political swipes out of the government info update packages. This is one Ontarian who can see in black and white as well as vivid colour. Should we blame our Premier for Ontario’s troubles?

There is a dangerous line between thriving businesses and a healthy population. Its name is death-by-covid19.

I remember Ford’s “Ontario: open for business”

Who on earth can believe that (1) the government (any government!) is following all the expert advice and (2) Ontario’s residents are doing a great job at fighting the pandemic? The two cannot be true as the infections and death continue to rise and fall. “Open for business” seems to be a conservative priority in Asia, Europe and North America. I will remember the value placed on human lives, and for now reception of conservative idea, even the revolutionary ones, is off.

Think about the spread

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CBCNEWS Network shines a light on unsung heroes like factory workers and taxicab drivers. The medical opinion is that reducing the exposure of people to covid19 who do not want to contract or spread is not a postal code operation. There is a high price to pay if we do not act more responsively to the severest threats, such as those person who are the only means of keeping the community functional. The potential for a phenomenally high number of contacts a taxidiver has in a single day makes his workplace a war zone. That is my opinon, but the covid19 war zone is a reality for the driver. The people who move us around for a living deserve to have their plight addressed. They and their families deserve to be a priority for vaccination. #thankugod4taxicabdrivers

The Ford government needs to match its talking points – the best economic engine, the greatest medical scientists, absolute commitment to following the science of coronavirus – to a daily improvement to the safety of all Ontarians. Governments all across Canada think they are operating behind a curtain of “the right words in public”. Factories and a host of congregant entities, including private parties have just come under police scrutiny. Children are showing up with their families in the hospital.

A large part of government reluctance to govern comes from the perception that Canadians will not stand for the curtailment of their right to assemble and the right to be free from being accosted by police services. Law is not so important as personal freedom. The primacy of personal freedom ends in an ever-increasing spread of covid19 (and its variants), death counts, and mishandling of vaccine supplies. The devastating outbreaks in nursing homes shows that talk is cheap, and slow pace of getting vaccine into arms of people who matter most exposes a plan we can only guess is connected to greed, apathy, and discrimination. Remember “kids need to be in school” and “we need to open up the bars and keep essential services running”? It came from every politician in Canada ansd the United States. Who can forget? Home must be a deadly place. Washing hands and observing social distance are simply too much to ask when saving lives is within our reach. Where we are now proves that every resident needs to think about the spread and be involved in reducing it.

What weapons are prospering?

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Even in the world of wolves Christ’s lambs are secure.  The gates of Hades do not prevail so it bears explaining that we are concerned about weapons formed against us.  Many books we read twist and warp the glorious gospel and we do not notice that we have drifted.  Someone in your/my circle will betray you/me.  Is that Isaiah 54:17 saying a genuine boast by the church in the face of obvious debility and death or is it the quiet and humble confidence of the individual?

Heritage and Righteousness

No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.

Isaiah 54:17

From barren to fertile

Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.

Isaiah 54:1

What the future looks like

And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.

Isaiah 54:12

A promise of invincibility or invulnerability is inconsistent with individual Christian faith. Every day has evil or adverse conditions that affect us.

Persecution and Opposition

That there is both persecution  and opposition aimed at believers and sometimes at specific groups is not debatable. The promise of 54:17 is that the weapons formed do not prosper. Between the extremes of birth and burial death and a host of setbacks haunt us. Is prosperity freedom from illness, a life of wealth, or is it that in spite of life’s common difficulties that God does not allow them to overcome us?

If there were documentation and not just casual witnesses to miracles like raising the dead, healing of fatal diseases, or of financial rescue we would find that doctrinal purity was not causal. Miracles in the Bible occur whether or not people have the correct views of the kingdom of God. The failure of weapons formed to hurt us depends on God’s grace.

We ignore a host of realities that are essential to the understanding of 54:17.

Reality is bigger than the pipe dream

Isaiah 54:11

O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.

Isaiah 54:11

The entity addressed is neither invulnerable nor invincible. The experience of this lady included being called the following.

  • The barren (vs. 1)
  • The forsaken (vs. 6 )
  • The spiritually grieved (vs. 6)
  • The comfortless (vs. 11)
  • The afflicted (vs. 11)
  • The tempest-tossed (vs. 11)

Did the founding fathers of the United States cross the ocean in cowardice and were there believers left in their homelands?

When the books mislead and the familiar betrays we must affirm God’s love and stand boldly as “more than conqueror”.  Tracking weapons will be tiring.  Their effect cannot be denied.  In fact if God opens our eyes to the conflict around us we will be shocked to see how many weapons there are and amazed when we realize how often we refuse the protection of his wings.