CANADA: On January 31, 1957, the Canadian Parliament proclaimed: “ A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed … to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October.”

USA: By President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln. a Proclamation: "I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

Why do many of us panic every time someone says we are focusing on the God of Christianity? It really seems that we make allowances for Eastern, New Age, Arabic, and many other gods, but want to reject our own heritage, failing to acknowledge that much of our western world progressed  significantly due to a focus on the right relationship with the true God.

Many people say  Canadians  like to ignore the origin of our day of Thanksgiving. Just in case we insult another religion.

Sorry folk! No insult intended, we are just so happy to be part of the family of God that we want to thank him for all he does. Personally, I think the USA has a more open acknowledgement of God  than us Canadians. Particularly in the south, I think the USA tends to have similar attitudes to Canadains in the Northern regions.

 2. The guys who put it in place had no intent of us worshipping any other type of God.

It is good we say thanks and the spinoff is everyone of a different religious persuasion gets to have a day off work!

So, everyone wins if this holiday is approached correctly!

That said, what do we have to be thankful for? The recession, H1N1, earthquakes and tsunamis’? Or do we give thanks for  the ability to overcome these and move on? DO we give thanks for learning how to deal with these disasters more effectively each time?

Then let’s also consider giving thanks for the advances in science that are awesome! Hubble telescope, hybrid cars, advances in food production and medicine.  I heard yesterday the smart scientists have just figured out the DNA sequence of one breast cancer tumour. So now, perhaps the lives of thousands of woman will be improved. Less pain and more alive mom’s for children! That is good!

This past year I spent some time helping build houses for poor Mexicans in Tijuana. This showed me what we have and rarely appreciate.

Some things we need to be thankful for is;

•  running water that is clean,
• flushing toilets,
• enough food each day,
• adequate clothing,
• TV’s that work without distorting the picture,
• ease of availability of bibles,
• free primary and secondary school education for our children,
• a car available to someone in the family,
• relative safety

and I could go on.

We are blessed, blessed, and blessed!

Thank you God for showing us mercy and blessing us! For not destroying us immediately for rejecting you, when we fail to acknowledge and  thank  you in our schools and public meetings, when we hide ourselves when people turn to Christians in public.

Yeah! Thanks for brave men of the past who established this day of Thanksgiving that we will celebrate in Canada this coming Monday.

Will the rest of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world join us in this thanksgiving? Let’s pray that it continues and is not subverted by negative people who cannot respect Christians. It will be a sad day if we turn this day of glorious rest and praise for the fruit of the work of our collective hands into another secular day of meaningless partying and blaspheming.

Dan Brown has written a number of books that are endowed with secret societies, international intrigue of various sorts covering various spiritual issues, they contain puzzles, codes and fast-paced action.

This is all good! We like a good story, at least I do! What I really don’t like is the mindlessly accepting that what he portrays is true. Wordsmithing is an art form! I appreciate that and turning facts into a good story is part of it. Twisting facts to falsely represent truth is probably unethical but it relies on people not falling in love with the lies and being able to understand it’s just a story.

Dan is a master researcher with a great brain and interweaves truth and lies in such a tight comprehensive web that distinguishing them apart is beyond the average person’s ability. In this case, we should accept it all as lies (since something that has one lie, cannot be considered truth).

What I don’t like is that his website points out that aspects of the book is true, but never comments that most of it is not.

For example he says “The Priory of Sion —a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization. In 1975, Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.       The Vatican prelature known as Opus Dei is a deeply devout Catholic group that has been the topic of recent controversy due to reports of brain-washing, coercion, and a practice known as "corporal mortification." Opus Dei has just completed construction of a $47 million National Headquarters at 243 Lexington Avenue in New York City.”[1]

He builds in Christian controversy into his books to sell more copies and God will be asking him to answer for those he leads astray by this deceptive approach. But it is not him that causes the damage. It’s us!

Why do we react to this as if God cannot protect himself. Why don’t we simply point out where he  is reporting falsehoods and let people make up their own minds?

I often feel that many Christians feel they have to protect or make excuses for God. All he asked is that we stick to truth and be witnesses to the world. This means revealing falsehoods, not taking on the poor deceived people who are propounding them, and giving people our own experiences of God that they can evaluate for themselves.

For example, the Priory of Sion’s most notable information was created as a ficticious history by Pierre Plantard in the 1960s to falsely build his popularity. It was registered on 7 May 1956 in France(apparently governmental registration papers exist proving this). Hardly an ancient organization! It was based on a myth! Then Opus Dei was founded in Spain in 1928 by a Roman Catholic priest. It is true but there are plenty myths that grew around the organization. Again he capitalized on myth!

Why do we get taken in by these clever lies? We need to spend a few minutes each day investigating and enjoying learning about events in this magnificent world around us. It’s fun!

With positive true reflection we can truly agree that God created a magnificent world of wonderful complexity for us to enjoy. Let’s enjoy it today!

Paul the ancient guy who first killed Christians and then became their leader (weird) says “we are all members of one body.” What does this mean, and how does it relate to speaking truth?

I guess this chat he is having with his friends is specifically addressed to Christians, but not in an exclusive way. He expected his letter to be read to others as well. That’s what they did in those days, because most people couldn’t read and news travelled slowly. Letters got stored and re-read to different groups many times. (The letter was written before television, radio or newspapers were invented, and the letters were a kind of substitute for the media we use nowadays).

He's saying that once we connect with God at a level that he becomes a part of our life, we will find ourselves living in an interdependent relationship with all other Christians. Talk about having lots of friends! Our physical body has lots of very interdependent parts, (all different). They don’t work too well if one piece of our body goes missing or fails to work. Similarly, Christians are unique, but interdependent, and we don’t work properly if we falsely represent ourselves, or fail to speak truth. While this is probably true for any social group, but it is fundamental and critical to Christianity since being a transparent person, someone who reveals themselves in truth, is critical to our relationship with God.

Nowadays some people seem to think they have to misrepresent themselves, and they lie to achieve various goals in their lives. An attitude of some is to stomp on others and clamber to the top. It is almost as if those people believe the person who is the most deceiving is the best. One new (but false) moral that is out there amongst a sub-group of people is “Success is not getting caught doing it”.

Should this be our motto? Let’s assume this is the right one, does this leave us feeling at peace and satisfied with life? Will it help others respect us and like to be with us? I think deceiving would cause us to have to use force and manipulation to ensure the respect of others. This type of respect isn’t real respect is it?

A selfish approach only seems to work provided we don’t get into a situation where a more selfish and powerful person goes against what we want. Then the inadequacy of being able to deal with the situation makes us unhappy. Either people get angry with us, or we may try to convince others that the more powerful deceiver is a liar so as to get others to think less of them (rather hypocritically isn’t it).

Can you see this is not an honest approach? Yet to some extent, I am sure we have all tried this at one time or another. I think if we do things like that frequently, it perhaps shows that we are really hurting inside and trying to hide away from some fundamental truth. We should at least be honest with ourselves. Behaviour like this, or misrepresenting ourselves to others, or changing how we represent ourselves depending on the environment we are in, is an indication that we may be lying to ourselves. Perhaps we should avoid this self destructive activity? We should also feel sorry (and not superior) for those that find themselves in this situation and try to help them, shouldn’t we?

Today I was driving into the city in traffic listening to a Christian radio with older well know preachers who were pushing their points on how to overcome the stupid, ignorant and nasty things people do. It was a bit depressing!

Where was the laughter, joy and peace that Jesus wanted for us? It got me thinking since I listen to this every day, and I wondered how it was impacting me.

You see, I am a Christian, I try to live as righteous a life as possible while on this earth. I make mistakes like we all do, I sometime lie (but try not to), I’m not perfect, but I love my wife, have never cheated on her, love my children as best I know how, I try and help those I come in contact with, God is in charge of our family finances, and so I am skipping along through life doing as much of God’s will as possible within my life context.

Somehow, listening to that radio station made me unhappy! While these guys all have excellent points to make, I can’t help wondering why I don’t hear young people on that channel. Old guys preaching in old ways! Yes, they know a lot of psychology, have dealt with lots of situations, know apologetics and all the rest, but they have got to lighten up!

They are so negative towards where our world is going. Hey man! I want to shout at them, "There are millions of young people out there that can change the world. We gotta give them a chance!"

Somehow their teaching just doesn’t help me. Generally they have penetrating voices,(some don't), they sound almost angry in tone(or have penetrating voices controlled perfectly but with explosive words and concepts), and I sometimes think they try to brow beat us with their words.

I don’t like it! I changed stations to a Christian music station led by younger Christians. What a difference! Upbeat music! Positive comments! Advice on what should be done to improve the local community! Advice on where to go over the next week to join in Christian events!

This got me thinking about how I deal with life. Do I focus on the stupid, ignorant and nasty things or on the positive?

I smiled because I thought how good God is to me and how I have changed to focus on the positive! Probably that’s why that stiff preacher based station was bothering me. My smile must have been infectious. On the way into work four strangers greeted me and a lot of people smiled at me too. My life improved just because I was letting God touch my heart. I also think it help those who smiled back!

How about you? What will your day be life? God led, or negative? Complaining or smiling? Take my advice, God is GOOD! Life is worth smiling at because tomorrow can be better than today!

Have you ever seen a young girl putting on airs and speaking truth in such a way as to hurt the recipient of their words?

That may tend to be something that guys are less likely to do, but guys have another trick they use. Some guys tend to make out they are better, stronger, etc. than the person they are speaking to, and then they drop a specific aspect of themselves out in front of another guy to put the other person down and show superiority.

Let's be honest, neither of these approaches are being genuine. These approaches can be considered as dealing with falsehood. I think we should acknowledge that we are not better than others. We may be more gifted, have more opportunities, but in the grand scheme of things this doesn’t make us better than another person.

Would you consider Bill Gates son to be better than you because he was born to Bill Gates? Not likely! We have value independent of the social, physical, and mental status society and our birth gives to us. If we keep this in mind, our words should reflect this, and make us worthy of speaking them.

If we want to have our words accepted, we need to be worthy of the message. If we speak on truth and include an obvious lie in what we say, our words are unlikely to be respected.  Paul knows that as humans, our spirits experience the spirits of others and so even if we don’t say things, if we think them, it generates a potential for a sensitive listener to detect something is wrong. Ever get that feeling when listening to someone that what they are saying is not really what they believe?

When wespeak, are we worthy of carrying the message we are conveying? Is this always the case in our conversations? I know I often fall short of being totally true in this area at some time or another. These are areas I ask God to help me improve and help reduce the damage I cause at these times. None of us are perfect so it’s good to have the relationship with God since he has super power and so can help us when we fail. That makes me feel better about myself! Then I have to extend that to being sure not to do a repeat of the problem. Do you take the same approach?