Following and Trusting : Encountering God Out of the Box

I want to bless our nation.

Here’s what I believe: nations are not accidents. God doesn’t just let countries happen and then hope for the best. He creates and shapes them, on purpose, the way He shapes a person — with a redemptive gift, a calling, a reason for existing that goes deeper than politics or borders. And like a person, a nation can walk in that gift… or drift into its shadow.

So let’s look at Canada for a minute…

What Canada Actually Is

Think about the shape of this land. Endless sky. Room to spare. Forests that go on longer than most people’s imagination. And a people who, for all our flaws, have built a reputation for one thing above almost everything else:

We make room.

We’re the nation the world sends its tired and its persecuted to. We’re the wide table with one more chair at it. That’s not a coincidence of policy. I believe that’s a redemptive gift — mercy, walked out as hospitality.

That’s who Canada was built to be.

Where It Gets Twisted

But the truth about every gift is… it has a shadow side, and the enemy loves to nudge us from the gift into the counterfeit.

Our gift is mercy.
Our counterfeit is fearful niceness.

This niceness looks like mercy from far away, but it isn’t. Niceness avoids conflict instead of resolving it. Niceness stays quiet so nobody’s uncomfortable. Niceness lets real wounds — the ones with our Indigenous brothers and sisters, the ones with the poor sleeping outside in a winter most of the world can’t imagine — go unspoken, because speaking up would be impolite.

“Let love be genuine.” — Romans 12:9

Genuine. Not performed. Not polite for the sake of polite. Real love — the kind our nation was actually built to carry — pays a price. Niceness never does.

The Blessing

So today, on behalf of the land I live in and love, I want to speak this out loud:

Canada, you were not formed by accident. Before a single flag went up, God had already spoken your name and given you a calling no other nation carries.

We call forth your true gift — mercy strong enough to make room, hospitality that costs something. And we call out the counterfeit — the fearful niceness that stays silent when silence isn’t love at all.

Land of the two coasts and the frozen North between them: you have carried wounds. Let your wounds grieve and receive God’s love and mercy to become healing for the nations. Let all who visit our land or encounter one of our citizens, receive healing – love, mercy and peace.

Rise into what you actually are, Canada. Not the world’s quiet cousin. The nation with the widest table on earth — set by a people finally brave enough to look hard things in the face and still say, there is room here for you.

[And yes… if you choose not to join us in peace and mercy, then… thank you for coming… bless you on your way back home. 😉 How’s that for mercy? LOL ]

So I bless you, Canada.
In your gift.
In your healing.
In your becoming.

Merri Ellen 🙂

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