HumanLifeMatters

THE DIVINE LIGHT OF CHRIST

2026-08-09T14:17:07.981-07:00

Crucial questions
Jesus said, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples. And you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-32.) What sort of freedom did Christ mean? Jesus expanded what He meant in John 8.34-35. He was speaking about freedom from the bondage of sin and condemnation. And for those of us who are acutely aware of our sins, this means everything. Like King David, our sins are always before us.

What is the truth? Jesus was speaking of truth that leads to salvation: In other words, Jesus is truth. I find it ironic that Pilate posed this very question as he was looking at Truth square in the face.

What is the light? Jesus is the light of the world.

The light came into the world but the world did not comprehend it (See John 1.5) Still, the light of Christ shines despite drastic or dire earthly circumstances. The light and Truth of Christ has both confounded and illuminated the hearts and minds of men and women living from the 1st to the 21st Century. Suffering has the capacity to draw the sufferer closer to Christ as their interior Guide and Master. This beautiful interchange points to the center of mystery of Redemption. Suffering itself is an experience of evil but Jesus made suffering the ultimate good of eternal salvation at the Cross.

To those who unite their suffering with the Redeemer, new horizons of the Kingdom of God are slowly revealed, through their suffering. That Kingdom is built of the redemptive power of divine love.

The light still shines

How can people comprehend the light? I’m not sure human beings are capable of comprehending the light without utterly and completely surrendering themselves to the Light (Jesus Christ). They must submit to the will of God—content to accept whatever that may be.

Now I know that the words “surrender” and “submission” represent particularly repugnant concepts to a vain, spoilt and stiff-necked generation like the ‘boomers (of which I am a part). Submission to anything is unthinkable to most of us. But the option is to stubbornly remain in soul-darkness, stumbling or suffering without meaning. That ends in the greatest human poverty: spiritual despair. I believe that is why depression is so common. In a culture with everything—the highest standard of life, the lowest levels of infant mortality, the greatest comforts and the least wants, why is depression so rampant?

I’m not referring to depression caused by grieving or mourning loss. I’m talking about unfocused depression. Could it be attributable to the level of Christ’s light we shut out or allow to be shut out of our inner selves?

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” Light shines brighter the darker it gets.

Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life. Noone comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14.6). Christ’s truth can (and does) set people free, even today. He said: “If you hold to my teachings, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Crucial questions
But what sort of freedom did Christ mean? Jesus expanded what He meant in John 8.34-35. He was speaking about freedom from the bondage of sin and condemnation. And for those of us who are acutely aware of our sins, this means everything. Like King David, our sins are always before us.

What is the truth? Jesus was speaking of truth that leads to salvation: In other words, Jesus is truth. I find it ironic that Pilate posed this very question as he was looking at Truth square in the face.

What is the light? Jesus is the light of the world.

The light came into the world but the world did not comprehend it (See John 1.5) Still, the light of Christ shines despite drastic or dire earthly circumstances. The light and Truth of Christ has both confounded and illuminated the hearts and minds of men and women living from the 1st to the 21st Century. Suffering has the capacity to draw the sufferer closer to Christ as their interior Guide and Master. This beautiful interchange points to the center of a mystery of Redemption. Suffering itself is an experience of evil but Jesus made suffering the ultimate good of eternal salvation at the Cross.

To those who unite their suffering with the Redeemer, new horizons of the Kingdom of God are slowly revealed, through their suffering. That Kingdom is built of the redemptive power of divine love.

The light still shines
How can people comprehend the light? I’m not sure human beings are capable of comprehending the light without utterly and completely surrendering themselves to the Light (Jesus Christ). They must submit to the will of God—content to accept whatever that may be.

Now I know that the words “surrender” and “submission” represent particularly repugnant concepts to a vain, spoilt and stiff-necked generation like the ‘boomers (of which I am a part). Submission to anything is unthinkable to most of us. But the option is to stubbornly remain in soul-darkness, stumbling or suffering without meaning. That ends in the greatest human poverty: spiritual despair. I believe that is why depression is so common. In a culture with everything—the highest standard of life, the lowest levels of infant mortality, the greatest comforts and the least wants, why is depression so rampant?

I’m not referring to depression caused by grieving or mourning loss. I’m talking about unfocused depression. Could it be attributable to the level of Christ’s light we shut out or allow to be shut out of our inner selves?

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” Light shines brighter the darker it gets.

I believe that’s why the light of Christ is so evident in suffering. It is in the ‘dark night of the soul’ that Christ’s light is most evident. Christ acts within suffering by the power his consoling Spirit of truth. That is why sorrow of affliction and the Joy of Christ can exist simultaneously.

Jesus referred to this in his passage about being the vine while we (his followers) are the branches. He said,

“As my Father has loved me, so have I loved you. If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

We must love even in suffering. If tears obscure your eyes, know that Christ is with your fire of suffering—whether you know it or not— just as he was the 4th figure with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in a fiery furnace.

BRIAN DOERKSEN: HIS MUSIC TOUCHED MILLIONS FOR CHRIST

2026-07-29T14:34:28.468-07:00

A great Christian has died. His obituary says:

“Brian Doerksen was a Canadian Christian singer-songwriter, worship leader, and pastor whose songs shaped the devotional lives of millions of believers around the world.”

He passed away from cancer, on July 21^st, 2026. Brian is with Christ now, but the world seems emptier yet richer because of him. He left us with his outstanding treasury of Christian music.

His obituary also correctly says that his “songs shaped the devotional lives of millions of believers around the world.” It’s so true. Brian had a God-given talent that he gave back to God as a song-writer and church leader.His music will enrich believers everywhere for decades to come. His most recognizable song may be “Come, Now Is The Time to Worship.”

I first met Brian at a Christian conference on disability where I was speaking (I have MS). We occasionally crossed paths when I was speaking somewhere and he was performing somewhere. I first heard Brian perform with his band. Wow!

Brain and his wife Joyce have two disabled sons. His music reflected a father’s hard-won wisdom; I was struck by his song Refiners Fire.

Purify my heart, let me be as gold
And precious silver
Purify my heart, let me be as gold
Pure gold

Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire
Is to be holy
Set apart for you Lord
I choose to be holy
Set apart for You my Master
Ready to do Your will

God uses suffering to refine and re-define us as children of God. He is more concerned about our holiness and our happiness. My fire has been suffering 40+ years with multiple sclerosis. Brian’s was more excruciating. His love for his sons must have broken his heart. He gave it all to God. My wife once said, “It’s easier to be than to watch.” Perhaps she was right.

Below is a Youtube link to the song Refine's Fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLyQAx8DpBI&list=RDMMBLyQAx8DpBI&start_radio=1

SAVAGE ABUSE OF A DISABLED GIRL

2026-06-10T14:21:43.010-07:00

I came across a disgusting video of a young girl in a wheelchair being abused a group teen thugs and someone was taking a video rather that helping her. An adult stood in the disance watching it happen when she should have stopped the girl being pummelled. She did not.

The difference between what the thugs are doing and what Canada is doing with its MAID program is that the thugs are obvious in their anti-disability sentiments. The Canadian government and many provincial governments are more sophisticated in their anti-disability actions or inactions. The message is the same. People with disabilities are not welcome. Thugs use their fists (like the ones in the video below while governments, organizations, policy makers, the lack of supports, isolation and poverty lead to requests for medical assistance in dying (MAID)— otherwise known as assisted suicides of people who are defeated. Isolation and lack of social supports, substandard housing (or lack of any housing) with no end in sight or hope for the future, can do that to a person. Clever bureaucratic wordsmiths can conjure up flowery euphemisms to make despicable indifference or anti-disability bigotry sound altruistic, even noble. It's a matter of degree and subtlety (or lack of it). Thugs use violence against unwanted disabled teen; governments and health professionals use civilized, empathic language that sounds so caring and liberating. The fiendish pied pipers of death lead weary and defeated sick and disabled people to a witches cauldron of poison.

Euthanasia and medical assisted suicide are wickedness presented as virtue.

See the video referred to at the link below. Be warned that Youtube has put a warning on it. It's hard to watch.

https://x.com/dnationgang/status/2064471625177694429/video/1

MDP

TRANSCEND: A Journey Toward Love (and why it matters)

2026-05-29T20:52:09.778-07:00

This story matters—and it is why TRANSCEND: A Journey toward Love was written. What Mark and LaRee Pickup have lived is more than a personal journey. We believe It is a testimony that God will use to touch others in desperate places. It is a story of an ordinary couple with an extraordinary story.

This story matters—

It is a declaration of hope — and a loving response to a culture that too often gives up on marriage, on life, on disability, and on the belief that love can endure when suffering lasts far longer than expected.

This film speaks directly into our moment.

In a world where families are under pressure, marriages are tested, disability is misunderstood, and hardship is met with despair or anguish, TRANSCEND offers a different message: Love can persevere, faith can deepen, and every life has immeasurable value — no matter how long or rough the road or how heavy the cost.

By supporting this campaign and the development of TRANSCEND, you are helping lay the foundation for a film that will:

- Encourage marriages to persevere through long seasons of trial.

- Give voice, dignity, and visibility to people living with disabilities

- Strengthen pro-life convictions with compassion, truth, and humanity.

- Share a Christ-centered vision of sacrificial, covenant love.

- Reach audiences far beyond the church through professional, high-quality filmmaking.

Your financial support directly helps underwrite the work required to bring this story to the screen. This includes strengthening the script, assembling a world-class creative team, and preparing a professional production and financing package capable of attracting distributors and partners worldwide.

Just as importantly, your prayers and partnership declare that stories like this still matter — stories that point people back to God’s design for love, commitment, endurance, and human worth.

If you have ever longed to see films that honor Christ, uplift families, and speak truth with grace and beauty, we invite you to be part of making TRANSCEND possible.

From the beginning until now, God has carried us.

We believe He is still writing this story — and we are deeply grateful to those who feel led to walk with us into this next chapter.

LaRee Pickup

Our story is a Christian love story— one we never expected to live, and one we have only survived by the grace of God.

When we were young, we were active, full of plans, and building a life together. We were the kind of couple who believed hard things could be overcome with prayer, perseverance, and love—but we didn't yet understand what it would truly require.

Not long into our marriage, everything started to change. My husband began to lose strength in his body, little by little. What started as small signs became something far more terrifying: a catastrophic, degenerative neurological disease that slowly stole his mobility. Overtime, paralysis crept in, and eventually he was confined to a wheelchair.

And then the years kept coming and turn into decades.

The kind of decades that test everything you thought you knew about love, marriage, and faith. There were seasons where the stakes were horribly high — times we faced fear, uncertainty, financial strain, and the emotional toll of watching someone you love lose piece by piece their Independence, day by day. There were moments when the future felt impossible to imagine ... and yet God always gave enough strength for the next step.

We raised our children in the middle of this battle. We learned how to keep joining our home even when our circumstances were heavy. We learned how to make room for grief without surrendering hope. And through it all, we kept coming back to the same truth: God is faithful, even when life is not.

This illness has led us on a 50-year pilgrimage.

It’s not a journey we would have chosen — but one that has deepened us in ways words can't fully explain. Overtime, God has taught us a deeper understanding of love: not just human love, but divine love. The kind of love that is patient, the kind that says please. The kind that serves. The kind that doesn't quit when the years get long.

And then …in our old age … something incredible happened

God gave us a miracle after decades in a wheelchair, after years of withered legs and the physical decline that seemed in irreversible — my husband stood!

And then he walked. God gave us a miracle in 2018.

His legs began to strengthen and what we believed was lost started to return. We are witnessing something that feels almost impossible to describe, and we don't take it lightly. We know miracles don't always look the way we expect but we also know what we have seen.

We are starting a new chapter: one we never imagined God would write for us so late in life. From the beginning to now, God has carried us.

LaRee Pickup (depicted as Laura Fraser in the screenplay.)

LaRee (Laura in the screenplay)

Mark (Dan in the screenplay)

AN INTERVIEW ABOUT DEGENERATIVE DISABILITY AND GRIEF (part 1& 2)

2026-05-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

Below is a link to Part 1 & 2 of a radio interview I gave to Sacred Heart Radio in Seattle about disability, marriage and grief for the program LifeTalk with Dan Kennedy and Rebecca Anderson.

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/sacredheartradio/episodes/208-From-MS-Diagnosis-to-Eucharistic-Miracle-with-Mark-Davis-Pickup-e3g011g

PART 2

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/lifetalk-nw/id1585120863?i=1000759071194

MDP

Contact: HumanLifeMatters@shaw.ca for interviews or articles

ARE WE WITNESSING THE COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION?

2026-04-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zq8-8qhlowY

We are watching the breakdown of western Christian civilization. A civilization rooted in Common Law for more than 700 years. It raised human liberty, dignity and freedom to heights hitherto unknown in human history. Western Christian civilization was so precious that previous generations (including my father’s generation) were prepared to die to defend it. But threatening dark clouds are on the horizon once again.

Islamists have struck an alliance with woke liberal progressives and home-grown communists to bring it all down. Do not take this lightly. Look at communist or Islamic countries and how they treat their people. That’s what is in store for us! Islam will crush any alliances with their useful idiots once domination is within grasp.

Those of us who treasure Western Christian civilization must vocally, visibly—without violence —stop our descent into a New Dark Age. If we can stop this evil … we may yet continue toward new sunlit uplands of human freedom and liberty for posterity. The hour is late and the enemy is at the gate. Rise up and defend our dying western culture and the Christian ethos it spawned and a societal mindset that governed us so well.

A FATHER'S DEATH ON A SKI HILL

2026-04-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

Such a beautiful winter day for skiing! The cold air was crisp and fresh. It was a day that would change the course of sixteen-year-old Dan’s life forever. He and his father George stood at the top of a ski slope. They loved skiing together. Such times were bonding times that seemed sacred It between father and son doing something they both loved together. They headed down the slope. Suddenly and unexpectedly, George had a massive heart attack and fell.

Dan skied up to him and noticed George was groaning, face down in the snow.

“Dad, are you okay?” There was no response.

“Dad?” No response.

“What’s wrong Dad? Dad! What’s wrong?!”

Dan frantically ripped off his skis then his father’s and turned
him over. George's eyes rolled back into his head. He was dying. Dan lowered his cheek to George’s lips. He wasn’t breathing. Dan screamed for help. He began to rock George's dying body in his arms like a baby. He wept.

Then, out of season and contradictory to their migration patterns, Dan thought he heard a lonesome cry of a loon, like a harbinger of things to come.

________________________

This is an AI generated image depicting a scene from my screenplay TRANSCEND: A Journey Toward Love based on my own true story. See screenplay website at www.transcendtolovemovie.com

NB: I replaced the names of the principal characters from LaRee and I to Laura and Dan. We shared our story to bring glory to God, not us.

OBSESSED WITH THE GODESS OF YOUTH AND PHYSICAL BEAUTY

2026-03-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

I know a ravishingly beautiful young woman with Hollywood good looks. For the sake of anonymity, let me call her Aphrodite, after the Greek goddess of beauty. Aphrodite’s statuesque beauty takes men’s breath away when she enters a room. Her physical beauty may seem like a blessing to the casual observer, but in actual fact, it has become her biggest curse.

She does not know adversity. A life without adversity is a life without challenges. A life without challenges is a life without the opportunity to develop character. Saint Paul commented that troubles and trials produce human qualities like endurance which produces strength of character (Romans 5.3-4). Aphrodite’s character development is so stunted it verges on a disability.

Aphro’ rarely hears the word ‘No.’ All it takes is a slight quiver of her perfect chin, a misty look from her stunning aqua-blue eyes, and the answer shifts to “Oh, all right.” The hint of feigned sadness disappears from Aphrodite’s angelic face.

Aphrodite’s exceptional beauty ensures she is doted upon by everyone she meets. It has been this way since she was a small child. Her divine beauty ensured she was spoiled and doted upon beginning with her first step.

Aphrodite always gets the best seat, the largest and sweetest candy bar, the most extravagant Christmas presents. She is vain, shallow, self-centered and mean. Beneath her perfect physical beauty bubbles a cauldron of resentments, selfishness and bitterness. Yes, Aphrodite’s exterior beauty has made her ugly inside and that is why her blessing is her curse.

People don’t like Aphrodite (she thinks it’s because they are jealous). There is something sad about Aphrodite. She has the depth of crackers and her life is without meaning.

The problem is that physical beauty is a commodity of diminishing returns. Beauty peaks at about twenty-two years then slowly begins to decline. In the end, it will be consumed like a moth. The day will come when men will no longer look at Aphrodite rather past her or through her to a new younger beauty walking behind her. Aphrodite will be plain ‘Jane’ which was her real name all along.

Western society is obsessed with youth and physical beauty. It is a poverty of the age in which we live. Youth fades, so does physical beauty. Yet so much attention and investment is dedicated to clinging to their memory long after youth and beauty have faded away. Botox and collagen injections, tummy tucks, face lifts, volumizing vitamin fortified shampoos, conditioners and gallons of hair colour to hide the grey become increasingly desperate and sad. Meanwhile, the true inner self – heart, spirit and soul – are starved of attention and important eternal development! The spiritual soul is the very thing Jane neglected as long as she was Aphrodite.

A physical body will surely wither and die but the spiritual soul is immortal. The Bible tells us that a human life is but a breath of time: “[Y]ou have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears.” (James 4:14) The Psalmist compared us to grass that flourishes in the morning and in the evening is cut down and withers. (Psalm 90.5-6).

The Church teaches that the human body is animated by its spiritual soul. The body and soul together form a profound unity and single nature made in “image of God.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 364-365). Though body and soul are separated at death they will be reunited at the Final Resurrection (CCC. 366).

We must have reverence and respect for our physical bodies. (Even a broken body like mine is a gift from God.) Sanctity of the body is the Scriptural concept. Having reverence for the body is different than worshipping it.

Saint Paul said, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). He went on to exhort us to glorify God in our bodies. This happens when we follow Christ. Jane can glorify God in her body ― Aphrodite can not.

Did you know it is impossible to believe in Jesus Christ without sharing in his Spirit? It is the Holy Spirit who reveals who Jesus really is.[1] (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 152, 154, 683).

Life in our physical body is series of ‘teachable moments”; the holy Spirit is the divine teacher. Aphrodite’s is not a student, her ego ensures that. But Jane can be a student of life, if she allows it. If Jane turns her spiritual ears to the leading of the holy Spirit then even adversity, trials, and sorrow become teachable moments. The divine teacher will become the divine Counselor and Comforter.

Jesus said “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever ― the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14.16-18.)

The “Counselor” is the holy Spirit. He will reveal Jesus Christ as the great I Am, God made man, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of world. Unlike Aphrodite, Jane can be a child of God through believing upon Jesus as Messiah (John 1.12). Through faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the Cross she can be reconciled to God. Life will become a rich source of “teachable moments” in preparation for eternity.

With the holy Spirit abiding within Jane, living a prayerful, repentant and sacramental life for Jesus, receiving his body in the Eucharist, Jane’s heart, spirit and soul can be nurtured to blossom into something beautiful and lasting. Outwardly she may age and diminish but inwardly she will be renewed and spiritually grow.

Goodbye Aphrodite, hello Jane.

[1]1Corinthians 12.3.

ESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN GROWTH OF TAKING UP YOUR CROSS

2026-03-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

My wife and I spoke to Edmonton’s Catholic Renewal Services group. They are affiliated with the Charismatic Renewal movement. They are on fire for the Lord. My wife and I loved them!

We sang songs of praise to God, we prayed, had breakfast together, laughed and fellowshipped together. The presence of the Holy Spirit filled the room.

When it came time for us to speak, LaRee and I shared our life story which included abortion, post-abortion grief, acquiring serious degenerative disability and the fears (sometimes downright terror) that comes with it. We spoke about a journey that began with sin and broken hearts, anger with life and God, then gradually moved toward acceptance, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. It was only then, with God’s tender leading, that we began to receive a renewed understanding about life, love (both human and divine), and something about what our Lord meant by taking up our cross daily (Luke 9.23). It was not an easy presentation because it required us to be vulnerable and brutally honest ― but we were among Christian friends.

This is not unique to us. Everyone must take up a cross of one sort or another. Sometimes it is obvious to other people and sometimes it is not. But each of us is called to take up our cross and carry it. In his classic Christian book The Imitation of Christ, the fifteenth century priest Thomas à Kempis wrote about the universal calling of taking up one’s cross: “No man’s heart can experience what Christ endured in His passion except the man who suffered as he did. ... The cross is, therefore, always in readiness for you and everywhere awaits you. Wherever you choose to run you will not escape it because you always take yourself with you and you will always find yourself.”

Taking up your cross will turn you toward your interior self. It is a critically important decision you must make every day. Taking up your cross involves the essential work of Christian growth. The daily struggle and suffering under the weight of your cross is where personal purification occurs. Bearing the cross requires you to chastise your will and body and bring them into subjection of God. It is not easy but it is necessary. Like I say, it requires work and suffering. Some people will refuse the cross ― but they can not escape it. As Thomas à Kempis reminds us, the cross is always before us and waiting because we cannot escape ourselves.

The sick or disabled must face and accept their affliction. The lonely must face their loneliness; their cross may change it to sweet solitude. The addict must face his addiction demons. Bearing the cross may be different for each person, but they must face it, and face it each day. In extreme cases, they must decide every hour to take up their cross.

What’s your cross? Don’t be surprised that it requires suffering (emotional, spiritual or physical). Suffering can have a refining effect as with gold in fire. Saint Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he considered ^“the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” Later in 2 Corinthians he reflected, “For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.”

For those who allow the cross to conform them to Christ crucified, they will find it is the way that leads to the Kingdom of God.

A consolation of the cross you take up is that Christ will walk with us under its weight. Your individual cross – no matter how onerous or burdensome it may be – is never heavier that the cross Christ endured. Remember that you are not alone. Christ is there just as He has been with Christians throughout history who took up their crosses.

If we unite our lesser sufferings with Christ’s Passion , crucifixion and Resurrection, we will discover a strange yet wonderful internal transformation is beginning to occur that's drawng us closer to Christ and away from ourselves.

FEAR HAS BEEN A TERRIBLE MOTIVATION IN MY LIFE

2026-02-28T14:50:17.239-08:00

https://youtube.com/shorts/8BryvILG1MQ?feature=share

EVERYONE IS AFRAID

2026-02-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

I read about a young man paralyzed in a freak accident. The story gave a glimpse of his grief and sorrow. The terrible prospect of permanent disability is beginning to sink in and it's breaking his heart. He told the reporter, "It's really, really hard." And so it is. Life with catastrophic disability is a hard journey. I know, I've lived with degenerative multiple sclerosis for over 40 years. Unexpectedly, yet wonderfully, God lifted my paralysis in 2018 and I stood and walked away from my electric wheelchair. The Holy Spirit told me not to forget how deep my sorrow, fears, and sense of isolation became in my grieving physical loss. He sis not take away the MS, my brain is riddled with plaque (the scler in sclerosis).

At the deepest point of grieving, life can seem like an endless series of disappointments, accommodations and compromises, lost opportunities, and inexpressible sorrow. One can feel totally alone, even in a crowded room.

Such a loneliness

Disability is a lonesome journey. It's not that friends are unkind - just hard to find. Then there are those dreaded moments at the end of each evening and one must make his way to the terror of the bedroom. It's in there that darkness awaits to engulf a grieving person in fitful sleep-wake torture. A chorus of despair, self-doubts and fear whisper, "You are alone. Nobody understands."

It is there, in the middle of an endless night, lying wide-awake staring into darkness, that a bed can become a rack. The horrible truth of life's misfortune can seem too great to bear. A human soul lays open like a gaping wound. Whimpers break into sobs of raw, pulsating grief.

Grievers beware! Emotions are unreliable, they are apt to intensify the feeling of isolation out of all proportion. Tears obscure vision and grief distorts perceptions of reality.

There is no such thing as an endless night. It only seems that way. The longest night must eventually give way to dawn. It is only fear and grief that tell us otherwise. Even the pitch black of arctic winter days will, in due course, transform into a peculiar summer midnight sun.

Many people with profound disabilities have risen above their circumstances and the abyss of intense grief and rise to incredible spiritual heights and human achievements-sometimes in spite of their disabilities and sometimes because of their disability.

Transcending disability

Perhaps the most famous example is Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827). Most of his vast contributions to the world of music were written in either partial or complete deafness.

George Frederic Handel (1685-1759) suffered from manic depression (what we now call bipolar). His beloved Messiah was written at the end of a depressive bout.

John Milton (1608-74) was blind when he wrote Paradise Lost (1667). Paradise Lost is generally considered to be the greatest epic in the English language. (Remember that John Milton also wrote Paradise Regained.)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an "invalid and a recluse" to use the phrasing of one biographer. There was nothing invalid about her - her gift for lyric poetry is with us to this day.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was physically crippled from polio at the age of 39, yet as America's 32nd president he led an entire nation through most of the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Grief, sorrow and fear are not unique to people with disabilities: they are common to the human experience. Everybody is acquainted with sorrow. Everyone is afraid.

With the exception of babies and small children, everyone has fears from the past and fears of the future.

Most people are afraid of serious self-examination lest they come face to face with inner demons, character flaws and emotional handicaps. They might be challenged to go through a difficult process of change. Some people fear being forgotten while others fear being remembered. We are afraid of committing ourselves wholly to love yet afraid of being unloved. Many people are afraid of committing themselves to lives with purpose - yet despise those who do. Some people are afraid of dying outside God's grace yet they are afraid to truly live within it. We may be afraid of being seen as extreme yet afraid to venture outside mediocrity.

But there is a question that has always been deep within you that must be asked. What is within you and I that can help us to transcend ourselves from fear to live a life of purpose and serve God?

Mark Davis Pickup

THEIR BABY WAS CONCEIVED IN LOVE, ... OR SO SHE THOUGHT

2025-12-30T16:51:00.000-08:00

She laid in her bedroom stunned at what her boyfriend said. He had told her he loved her and now she was carrying their baby inside her. She didn’t understand his coldness. Their baby was conceived in love ... or so she thought. Although they were only eighteen, she wanted to get married and raise their child. He wanted her to have an abortion so he could party with his friends. Alone, unsupported and emotionally abandoned by her boyfriend, condemned by his mother, and her grandmother pushing her toward the abortionist, she gave in and aborted their baby. Six months later they broke up and she moved back east. Little did they know that was not the end of their story—not by a long shot!

Mark Davis Pickup

(A scene depicted from my screenplay TRANSCEND: A Journey Toward Love. See the screenplay website here )

CHRISTMAS WITH AN EMPTY MANGER

2025-12-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

Years ago, my town held a community church Christmas concert at the local catholic church. Outside in the chilly winter weather was a nativity scene. Inside was garland, ribbons, another nativity scene, poinsettia’s, candles and a general reverence for the Advent Season. I specifically remember a young woman from the Pentecostal church singing a beautiful rendition of “O Holy Night.”

O Holy night! The stars are brightly shining

It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth

Then we were in for a real treat! A hefty woman from the apostate United Church of Canada (UCC) came sliding across the front of the church, snapping her finger to the beat of the music, and delivered an off-key version of “Rockin’ around The Christmas Tree.”

Rockin' around the Christmas tree

At the Christmas party hop

Mistletoe hung where you can see, Every couple tries to stop.

When Rotunda finished, she took a bow and scampered away whispered to herself, “Nailed it!” The over-crowded church sat in stunned silence at the spectacle they just witnessed. What was that? A comedy routine? I whispered to my wife, “United Church theology.”

SAD LEGACY

There was a time when the United Church of Canada was the largest Protestant denomination in Canada. But beginning in the heady 1960s, they decided to try and be relevant and hip, abandoning the uncompromising Gospel of Jesus Christ for liberal trendy tolerant worldviews. They became tolerant to the point of tolerating sin, then accepting it, then celebrating it. The pews emptied.

Now the UCC is just a sad relic; they are little more than a secular organization—like a social club cloaked in religious vestments. Ironically, they sought to be relevant and became irrelevant.

The fact is that people do not need soft soap and the tasteless gruel of a liberal social gospel devoid of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is God made man, fully human yet fully divine, the only Messiah and Redeemer of the human race. When individuals surrender their lives to God’s will, repent of their sins through faith in Jesus Christ and cleansed by His blood shed at Calvary, they find unspeakable peace, joy and purpose.

DOESN'T FIT THE NARRATIVE

But this doesn’t fit with liberal woke narratives dating back to the 1960s. The United Church of Canada (and other liberal denomination) abandoned crucial tenets of Christianity such as the biblical creation account, the miracles, the Virgin birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (except in some metaphorical sense) and the inerrancy of scripture as our final authority in all matters of faith and conduct.

Their clergy have even denied our Lord’s unequivocal words: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14.6). This is so offensive to the United Church of Canada (and many other liberal Protestant churches)! It offends because of the exclusivity of Christ’s claim. In the Book of Acts, Saint Peter says the same thing about Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:11-12.)

Jesus is the only way to God, not a way. This is untenable to liberals—there must be many ways to heaven. Christ and the Apostle were not inclusive according to post-modern liberal sensibilities and that is utterly unacceptable.

Now they come to Christmas. How do liberal churches, like the United Church of Canada, face the truth that the timeless One entered time when they have denied Him, His power over life and death and the foundations of Christianity? Over the past 70 years they have chosen comfort over the Truth. Their manger is empty.

Pray the blinders be removed from those who have compromised the Christian faith or abandoned it completely and come back to Christ and His holiness and seek to become more like Him.

MDP

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with, and in the end, despair.” — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

CANADA'S WAR ON CHRISTIANS

2025-11-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

I am old enough to remember a previous Christian moral consensus that governed western culture for hundreds of years. It was the foundation of the family and the community. It was a time when most people knew the 10 commandments. They may not have followed them, but they knew they should have. That has all been swept away. We are entering the cruel rock-hard edge of a New Dark Age.

That former Christian ethos can still be reclaimed and restored against its enemies, whether it be in the halls of power, on the streets of our nation, or standing against unbiblical leaders in our churches seduced by the spirit of the age.

My country of Canada is anti-Christian. What are Christ’s followers to do? Remain faithful to Him and the holy Scriptures, even in the face of withering opposition. Ultimately, there is no neutral ground between truth and falsehood, right or wrong, good and evil. Christ IS the Truth (John 14.6). Remember, He warned His followers, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” (John 15.18.) The servant is not greater than the Master (John 13.16).

The Truth of Jesus Christ and the previous Christian moral ethos is being actively and intentionally swept away from the public square and public discourse. Civil society is not civil when it comes to Christians. The common good is not common. Christians are decried and despised in politics and the media.

Canada has replaced the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob with a brutal liberal God of nihilism, perversion and corruption. A grotesque and secular new entity has emerged that pays to kill unborn children, the sick, the disabled, denies natural sexual order, natural law and burns down Christian churches.

Christians of various denominations must come together to stop this new and deviant version of Canada that has emerged. It is no time to be docile or timid! Stand up for all that sacred and good, beautiful and true. What is source of goodness, beauty and truth? Jesus Christ!

Mark

ANTI-DISABILITY BIAS IN CANADA

2025-10-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

Krista Carr is the Executive Vice President and CEO of Inclusion Canada. Inclusion Canada is a national federation of 300 local and 13 Provincial/Territorial Associations working on behalf of approximately 1 million Canadians with a developmental disability and their families. Ms. Carr recently appeared before a parliamentary committee on The Status of Persons with Disabilities. Committee member and MP Garnett Genuis asked Ms. Carr about disabled Canadians’ fear of seeking ordinary medical treatment. They fear (and quite rightfully) Canada's assisted suicide law (euphemistically referred to as Medical Assistance in Dying MAiD). Carr informed the committee of health care providers suggesting MAiD, under track 2 of the legislation.[1] Genuis asked how often she encounters this? She said “weekly.”

More than 90,000 people have been killed under MAiD. It now accounts for 1 in 20 deaths in Canada.

This is just the natural of post-Hippocratic medicine. That ancient Oath (dating back to the fifth Century BC) forbade assisted suicide (and abortion). It said:

“I will do no harm or injustice to them [patients]. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.”

Awkward …! Modern medicine does all of this stuff—so they revised the wisdom of antiquity for a new revised version. The new revised Hippocratic Oath was removed any reference to helping people killing themselves or abortion. It's name should be the Hypocritical Oath.

I witnessed this anti-disability bigotry amongst Canadian medical professionals more than 30 years ago when I was a member of the ethics committee for the University of Alberta Hospital. When I joined the committee in 1992, as their community/disability representative, I was in an electric wheelchair (multiple sclerosis). My chair stuck out like a sore thumb for other members of the ethics committee. My wheelchair was my credential. In the early years, medical professionals sitting around the table were very good at treating patients with disabilities with the same respect and protocols that everyone else received.

In 1995, a case came before the committee about a young man, Terry Urquhart. He had Down Syndrome. He was denied admission on to the lung transplant list because of a hospital policy that only persons of “reasonable intelligence” could be considered for transplantation. transplant list.

His tenacious parents would not accept that answer, but the hospital was firm. They did exactly what any good parent would do: They took the story to the media. They got friends to protest outside the hospital. Disability organizations lobbied on Terry’s behalf. The Chair on the ethics committee was visibly agitated. Reporters wanted to talk to him. I asked if the hospital really had a policy excluding people with Down Syndrome from receiving organ transplantation. They admitted it. My response was blunt: “Then we deserve every lump of bad publicity and public scorn we get.” Eventually the hospital caved to the embarrassment of such a discriminatory policy and public pressure that Terry got his lung transplant.[2]

The hospital eventually caved and Terry got his much needed lung transplant. I was shocked at how many Albertans the transplant.

A number of Albertans felt that Terry’s transplant was a “waste” and organs should go to more “productive” members of society. Some radio phone-in callers said they were considering tearing up their organ donor cards because of the hospital’s decision. It was yet another indication how low people with disabilities are held in certain quarters.

During my twelve years on the university hospital ethics committee, I noticed a hardening of medical professionals on the committee toward care of severely disabled patients. Things that previous went unspoken or whispered just out of my earshot were openly said to my face. Hostility toward the disabled was overtly expressed. Parents of a little boy born with a severe disability who required a major procedure (I can’t remember the details) was an example. The background information about the case indicated the child was happy and came from a supportive and loving family. A senior doctor on the committee objected to this assertion and said the parents were actually abusive! I asked her where she got such an idea. She glared at with eyes cold as ice, and said, “They are abusive because they agreed to treatment when he was born.” Despite the report stating the child was happy and had a good family, the doctor rejected it because of her own anti-disability bias.

Fast forward to 2025. Euthanasia/assisted suicide have been legal in Canada since 2016. What was sold as an option for dying people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable” was just the beginning—the thin edge of a deadly wedge. In 2021, a second phase began that removed the criteria of death being “reasonably foreseeable.” The cross-hairs shifted to Canada’s disabled in what is known as track 2 of MAiD. We are waiting for the jaws of MAiD to widen widely again in 2027 to include people whose sole condition is mentally ill and suicidal. Barbarism!

[1] Track 2 of MAiD is specifically targeted at people with disabilities that are not terminal. This is the distinguishing factor between track 1 and track 2. Track 1 requires a person’s illness or disability to have a death in the foreseeable future. Track 2 is for non-terminable people with disabilities. An AI search of track 2 MAiD states that individual eligibility criteria is for:

“… [I]ndividuals whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable: They must be at least 18, eligible for Canadian public healthcare, and have a grievous and irremediable medical condition. This includes having a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability that is in an advanced state of irreversible decline and causes unbearable suffering. A voluntary, informed request is required, and two independent practitioners must perform the assessments, which includes consultation with a specialist if needed. While the eligibility assessment period is typically at least 90 days, it can be shortened if the person's capacity is at risk of being lost.”

In 2027, MAiD will be offered to mentally ill Canadians who are suicidal. That’s how stone-hearted Canada’s governing Liberal Party has become.

[2] “Disabled boy gets transplant, The Interim magazine, 29 April 1995.

MARK CARNEY & A 2-STATE SOLUTION

2025-09-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has stated Canada recognizes a Palestinian state to exist beside Israel. His “envisions” this yet to be state of Palestine that will living harmoniously with Israel, “building its future in peace and security alongside the State of Israel.” Didn’t we go down a similar path with the Oslo accords of 1993 and 1995?

The idea of a two-state solution or land-for-peace has been proposed for decades, without success. The idea is as deeply flawed as land-for-peace efforts of the Clinton Administration in the 1990s. The Oslo Peace Accord eventually collapsed with both Israel and the Palestinians blaming each other. I predict (and I hope I am wrong) that the latest attempt at a two-state solution will have as much of a chance to succeed as the Oslo Accord.

Nearly 30 years ago (June of 1996) I wrote to then Secretary of State Warren Christopher about the unstable Middle East and the proposed land-for-peace solution. As noble as the idea was, many people suspected it wouldn’t work. There was no desire of either party for it to work. How could it? Both parties claimed historic ownership of the same land dating back to antiquity. There have been oceans of blood shed over historic grievances. But the central ingredient for a two-state solution or land-for-peace is missing. What was the missing ingredient? A desire by both parties—an authentic wholehearted desire for peaceful coexistence. It didn’t exist 30 years ago, and it doesn’t exist now! The foundation of a two-state solution is too shaky and fragile.

In my correspondence to US Secretary of State Warren, I stated:

“Any peace worth having must be based on peace for the sake of peace. That is a peace of substance. It’s rather like love motivated by money versus love motivated for love’s sake. The first is counterfeit, the second is genuine. Love based on pecuniary motives is not love at all. Peace motivated by securing land is a counterfeit peace. The real question arises: What happens after the land swap? Will the memory of land for peace be steadfast when the next grievance is on the table? (Desiring is a strong motivation until the object is attained, then often the desire for more raises its ugly head. It’s human nature.) Deep-seated, historical hatred between peoples will remain—not to mention wild variables like Hezbollah and Hamas. … Land for peace can be a motivation, not the motivation. Peace for the sake of peace is the only peace worth having.”

Fast forward to 2025. What makes Mark Carney think it will work now? It may well be that the Palestinian authority gets will get sidelined again by Hamas. Will Hamas willingly step aside from power when their goal to wipe Israel off the map is still unattained (and hopefully never will be attained)? They will regroup. They may combine forces with other terrorist groups in the area such as Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Resistance Committeesand/or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade to seize power in a newly establish Palestinian state?

Remember how ineffective the PA was after the Oslo Accords of the mid-1990s? Why wouldn’t they be equally ineffectual now? The central ingredient for peace is still missing: A desire to achieve peace for the sake of peace and a willingness of both sides to sacrifice something to achieve such a worthy goal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has emphatically vowed to prevent a Palestinian state. His first priority is protecting Israel and its people and eliminating Hamas. That’s his job. He has no other choice. And so the impasse to a two-state solution will continue as long as Hamas is part of the equation. Prime Minister Netanyahu has clearly stated that he will not stop hunting down Hunting down Hamas until they are completely eliminated and all hostages released. So why haven’t the Palestinians cooperated with Israel to eliminate Hamas from their midst? The war will be over. Could it be that the Palestinians actually support Hamas? If that is true, how can there be any peaceful two-state solution?

Carney’s regurgitated two-state solution remains an unstable vision for Israelis and Palestinians as two independent states living peacefully side by side. Why would Israel agree to live side-by-side with a state in which an entity remains embedded that has vowed for their destruction and will likely continue campaigns of terror against them? Hamas wants Israel’s destruction and Israel may rightly believe they are in Gaza. There is still no overwhelming desire in for peace from those who surround it Israel. Israel cannot allow itself to be next to a state that poses a clear and ever-present danger to very existence.

Until Hamas is eliminated there can be no two-state solution, no land for peace. The risk is simply too high and unstable regardless of what Prime Minister Carney wants to envision. Desiring is not having. Until peace is wanted for the sake of peace there will be no peace.

President Trump can provide a critical stabilizing role in finding a solution for the Palestinians and Israels. I think it begins with the complete elimination of Hamas by whatever tough or brutal means are required short of nuclear. This may create deterrence for other terrorist groups who threaten the security of Israel. They must understand that President Trump is resolute in protecting Israel (surrounded by hostile nations). If that means Israel’s allies must assist them in rooting out and neutralizing Hamas, then so be it. Once Israel feels safer, a path forward for peace and economic renewal for all can begin.

CHARLIE KIRK'S ASSASSINATION AND AMERICA'S FUTURE

2025-09-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

Did Charlie Kirk die in vain? He was such a good man with wisdom beyond his young years. Charlie Kirk was a husband, a father and a Patriot, but he was first a lover of Jesus Christ. He openly proclaimed his faith to the world. For the sake of goodness and Truth, he willingly took the poison darts and arrows of the woke left. Millions of people across America (and at least one old man in western Canada) are tearfully asking the question: Why? Vision is blurred when clouded by tears. Charlie Kirk has become a Christian martyr.

Under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Saint Paul said that all things work together for good to those who love God, those who are called according to His purpose. That describes the life of Charlie Kirk.

God can use what has happened for good. God can use conservative America’s pain to accomplish wonderful things far beyond what we can imagine.

Let me illustrate this with an example from my own life. Early in my career I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). It was very aggressive.The upward trajectory of my career stalled. Eventually I was put out to pasture at the age of thirty-eight. I sank into a clinical depression as MS ravaged my body and a creeping paralysis became apparent. I asked God ‘Why?’ My life seemed over.

It was in the dark shadows of depression and defeat that God gave me a task: Be willing to go with my canes, or crutches or wheelchair anywhere I was given the opportunity to proclaim a simple message. What was that message? Every human life has incalculable value and worth for no other reason than they bear the indelible image of God. America and many jurisdictions were contemplating legalizing euthanasia. Jack Kevorkian was leading the charge. I said Yes, thinking God would only send me around the Canadian province where I live. Nope. He sent me across Canada and the United States—from Victoria on Canada’s west coast to Nova Scotia on Canada’s east coast, from Los Angeles to Boston, Whitehorse in the Canada’s Yukon to Louisiana and Alabama on the Gulf of America and countless small towns and big cities between those points. My last speaking engagement was Dubuque, Iowa in 2018. Travel had become too difficult.

What seems like a tragedy or defeat can be the beginning of something much larger, like using Charlie’s martyrdom as a turning point for America to return to being one nation under God? I believe with all my heart that being one nation under God was what raised America’s economic prowess for unprecedented prosperity, and a colossal military for the forces of good, and human liberty (not licence) to heights never known before in history. God blessed America.

Now that is threatened because half of America has forgotten they were one nation under God. America is at a crisis point. You can either crack apart and make a mockery of your noble experiment that thrived for more than two centuries; or will this hour of crisis be an opportunity for America’s renewal. Take Charlie Kirk’s example.

Reject the evil of the woke far left who seek to destroy America as we know it and replace it with communism or some grotesque entity concocted in their own image.They and their Democratic friends (with a compliant media) fan the flames of American against American. Christ said: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand".

I don’t want that for America! I love America! Take the love of Christ to Americans who are so lost they don’t even know if they are male of female, take it to women in crisis pregnancies to choose life not death for their babies, Make killing old and disabled people—who have sunk beneath the waves of their circumstances—anathema. Remove gender ideology from schools, encourage faith and family and pray for God’s guidance in the coming dark days of crisis that will either lead to America’s demise, or America’s renewal. Understand that free speech must have its limits. It stops with the espousing the killing of fellow American, or the destruction of the nation: its institutions, its laws and constitution, its mores and long-established Christian ethos that has been a blessing to America. The left is trying to bring all that down.

Their treacherous and treasonous ideas cannot be tolerated. They must be rooted out by whatever means necessary to preserve the American Union and the integrity established from the nation’s beginning. Granted, there were dark chapters, but the journey toward a more perfect union has always been the goal within the Founder’s original vision. They had a vision of what America could be but was yet unattained. Do not lose sight of their great vision and stay the course toward it.

Reflecting on the 1787 Signing of the American Constitution in Philadelphia, one of the nation’s Founding Fathers, James Madison (1751-1836), remembered words Benjamin Franklin spoke at the Constitutional Convention. He wrote:

“Whilst the last members were signing, Doctor Franklin, looking toward the President’s chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members around him, that the painters had failed to distinguish in their art, a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often, in the course of the sessions, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President’s chair, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length, I have the happiness to know. That it is a rising, and not a setting sun.”^[1]

Now, 238 years after the great man spoke those immortal words, Americans must again determine whether the sun is still rising or is it setting on the United States. If the sun is setting on your great nation, understand that darkness always follows sun sets. If the sun is still rising on the sacred uplands of America, there will be a light of a renewed and hope-filled future. American’s must decide which it will be. I pray you will follow Charlie Kirk's example, choose to a rising sun, and Make America Great Again.

MDP

Alberta, Canada.

_____________

[1] Lefton S. Stavrianos, ed., Reading in World History (Boston: Allyn and Bacon Inc.), p. 258.

SEVEN WONDERFUL YEARS

2025-08-10T16:49:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between envy and jealousy? The Mirriam-Webster online dictionary defines it this way:

“While many people believe that jealous means fearing someone will take what you have, and envious means desiring what someone else has, historical usage shows that both mean "covetous" and are interchangeable when describing desiring someone else's possessions.”

And again:

““Envy means discontented longing for someone else’s advantages. Jealousy means unpleasant suspicion, or apprehension of rivalship.””[1]

Envy can fester inside a person like a boil that needs to be lanced. It can bring the worst out in a person. Envy is corrosive to the soul. Jealousy sets the human heart on fire. Covetousness. It is the Tenth Commandments: Exodus 20:17. It tells us not to covet any of our neighbours’ possessions.

At a personal level, I am not guilty of coveting other people’s cars or large houses, exotic vacations or business success. I have, however, been guilty of coveting other people’s health. For over 40 years, I have struggled with multiple sclerosis (MS). Large swaths of my adult life have been in wide-eyed fear of aggressive MS, as paralysis gradually spread. It put me in an electric wheelchair. Often, I wished I could walk like other men do. That’s envy.

My Canadian community has a hill at its center. One crisp Canadian winter day, I took my three-year-old grandson for a ride on my electric wheelchair. The fresh air was cold and clean. My little guy was toasty warm in his snowsuit and touque under a wool blank on my lap. We headed up the hill (my house its at he bottom of the hill). About halfway up, I stopped to watch another grandfather sliding down the hill on a toboggin with his small grandson about the same age as mine. His child squealed with delight. They tumbled off the toboggin into a cloud of snow and laughed more.

My grandson simply watched them from my lap. I was envious. I wished I could do that with my grandson! I wanted the health that that other grandfather enjoyed; there was no desire to take his health from him. I was envious not jealous. But as the good folks at Mirriam-Webster said, “…historical usage of both [envy and jealousy] shows that both mean “covetous” and are interchangeable when describing someone else’s possessions.” That other grandfather possessed health I did not have. I felt swindled by life.

To covet is a sin. That wintry day, covetousness gripped my heart and stripped me of my joy of being with my grandchild. Envy robs joy and contentment.

Saint Paul said:

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”[2]

I needed to confess my sin and be content with what I do have: life and love. With time I learned to stop looking back at the normal body I once had. After many years of paralysis and in an electric wheelchair, something unexpected but marvelous happened one day when I prayed to Christ before me in the Blessed Sacrament:

“Lord, if it be possible, raise me from this wheelchair, even for a short time, even if I must use a walker, crutches or canes. Let me dance with my wife, even if it’s only once. Make my atrophied legs bear my weight.”

I didn’t ask for a cure, only time.

And then over the next few days, it happened! God did raise me (an old man) to walk again in late-stage MS. That was over seven years ago. We had been convinced my next address would be a nursing home or a cemetery! Everything turned around.

On a cold winter’s night, with the dim light of a fire's embers in our fireplace, my wife and I danced once again, just the two of us. I played the last song we danced to so many decades before: Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady, by the Commodores. I have walked for seven years. My wheelchair has been in a spare room gathering dust, and my wife and I still dance.

Now, my legs are growing weaker and tire walking more than short distances. I've developed a serious limp. Is it time to go back into my wheelchair? I don't know. If so, then let it be. I was given seven wonderful years. I prayed for time, not a cure. God gave me that. Thank you Lord.

[1] Mirriam-Webster, ”Jealous versus Envy” https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/jealous-vs-envious

[2] Philippians 4:12-13.

A MORE PERFECT LOVE

2025-07-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

I read an excellent rather old but thought provoking article by Gilbert Meilaender in the February 2022 edition of First Things magazine, under the title “Reunion of the Far Shore.” He addressed the desire Christians have to be with love-ones who have died. He wrote:

“What should be apparent is that thinking about our desire for reunion on the far shore directs us to add a problem at the heart of Christian life. How are we to hold together—to live together—the two great commands, to love both God and our neighbor? Clearly, if we think of God chiefly exists to satisfy our desires and make us happy, we are hardly loving him above all else. Moreover, it is hard to deny much in our loves and desires are misshapen and distorted, and that they often need not to be satisfied but to be redirected and perfected.”

He's right. What are Christ’s two great commandments. We find them in in Matthew 22:37-40, when Jesus responds to a pharisee who tested Him by asking what is the greatest commandment? Jesus responded, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Out of our love for God should pour gigantic love for our neighbour and ourselves. Only in having a healthy self-love or self-concept, are we capable of properly loving others. I’m not talking about having inflated egos or conceit or a deluded sense of self grandeur; I’m referring to a self-awareness that we have being endowed with since our beginning with the indelible image of God, and that we are loved with unfathomable love by Him.

The closer a person draws to God, the more he becomes aware of his own inadequacies and sin and distorted state of being. Like Peter falling at Jesus’ feet, we are tempted to ask the Lord to depart from us because the blazing holy light of His presence exposes our darkness and sin, our unholiness. He is perfect as we should be.[1] The light of His perfection, makes us turn away in shame.

I dare not delude myself to think that becoming perfect is possible in this life, only the next, even though Jesus said to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5.48). The Apostle James wrote “We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect and able to keep their whole body in check."2 Church tradition holds that James was the half-brother of Jesus (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3; Galatians 1:19).

I’ve fallen short of the mark so often, it could fill volumes to chronicle my failings. One of my faults—sins, has been misplaced love that has focussed of my family, at the expense of my love for God. I am guilty of breaking the 1st Commandment, for that I have confessed my sin.

Mark

[1] Cf. Leviticus 19:2, Deuteronomy 18:13, 2Samuel 22:31, 2Corinthians 7:1, Philippians 3:12.

[2] James 3:2.

SHOULD I START A PODCAST EXPLORING ISSUES OF DISABILITY?

2025-07-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

Earlier in my life, numerous people tried to lure me to central Canada and away from my little French town in the hinterland of western Canada. Perhaps the most tempting offer that I remember (it was a very long time ago) was being offered a job to host a national TV series the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was planning in 1990 (I told you it was a long time ago). The series was going to deal with issues surrounding disabilities and showcase the lives of Canadians with physical and mental challenges.

The CBC flew me to Ottawa to meet with a senior producer at an elegant restaurant who presented me with the idea. There was only one catch: I would have to uproot my family and move to Toronto or Ottawa (I can't remember which city) and leave our small town life. It was an extraordinary opportunity—to be sure—one of the best I was ever offered during my short career. I must admit that I was tempted.

But the timing was wrong: My children were young and settled. Uprooting them would have been too disruptive to their lives. Besides, we had extended family near who needed us. I looked out the restaurant window while the executive producer for the series sat across the table waiting for my response to her offer to host the show. That still small voice inside me said, "Let it pass." Reluctantly I turned down the opportunity.

Dreams of grandeur were not mine to have. God planned something else for me: Quiet contemplation in the midst of physical struggle rather than a television show. To the world, God's plan might have seemed laughable compared to the lights and glamour of television.
Just over a year later my disability forced me to retire and live on a modest disability pension. My disease kept ravaging my body and forcing my type A personality into stillness and contemplation. Days, months and years, then decades, were spent convalescing while looking out my window as seasons passed. Successive generations of blue jays flew to the bird feeder in the backyard. My hair turned white. Grandchildren were born. That still small voice whispered, “Be open to love for in love you will find God.” I discovered it is true. The meaning of my life did not come in a thunder-clap of glory rather in a breeze and ordinary rhythms of life. Sometimes we see most clearly through eyes blurred with tears.

Looking back now, as a 72 year old man, I think God wanted to use my disability and paralysis with aggressive MS to teach me something critically important that can only be learned in quietude: The art of true love (both human and divine). God wanted me to stay put and wait on Him.

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Now, 35 years after the turning down my chance to host a national television program about disabilities where I could have taken my advocacy to Canadians across the nation, new technologies and new ways of communicating have emerged, I’ve decided to try and take a next step and try podcasting to complement the blog. What do you think?

Mark

IS THERE ABSOLUTE TRUTH?

2025-07-14T15:13:00.000-07:00

The belief that Jesus Christ alone is the saviour of humanity and the only way to salvation has been a foundational tenet of Christianity from its beginning. At the Last Supper, Jesus spoke to his disciples about the way to heaven. He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life, No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14.6.)

Jesus went on to promise “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept.” (verse 16-17) After Christ’s Ascension, Peter was filled with the holy Spirit (as promised) and proclaimed this about Jesus: “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” (Acts 4.12) Pretty clear, pretty exclusive. The Apostle Timothy was equally clear: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2.5)

Unpopular message

This sort of message is not generally welcome to our age of pseudo-pluralism where truth is relative and people want to hear about many paths to God. But if the testimony of Jesus, Peter and Timothy are to be believed, this is not true. The only way to God is through Jesus Christ. Should I believe those who espouse that all religions are basically the same and there are many paths to God, or should I believe Jesus, Saints Peter and Timothy. Hmmm, I wonder who it will be ?

Truth is rarely fashionable—but it is knowable. The truth is knowable because Jesus Christ is truth and the He is the saviour of the world, and we can know Him.

21^st century relativism

Many people in the 21^st Century no longer accept that there is such a thing as truth, and certainly no such thing as absolute truth. To them, the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth—there’s no right and wrong, only opinions. All ethics are situational. (Actually, if there’s no such thing as right and wrong then the concept of ethics is meaningless.) Everybody is tolerant of everything; the only thing not to be tolerated is intolerance. What we are experience is the liberal left's emerging as intolerance of any views except their own. And as we see with the left's intolerance of even laws that don't meet with their approval. We witness that with violence such the riots in Minneapolis and Los Angeles in open defiance of law and order.

People must rely on laws as the only recourse for moral direction. But even laws can be changed with a simple majority vote and a stroke of a legislative pen. In a world of relativism, there is no higher Truth that exists apart from what legislatures declare and enforce. The final arbiter of truth is power. Change the government and what was right and true yesterday is replaced by a different government and a new set of standards and a different set of lawmakers. What was previously unthinkable can becomes the law of the land. Germany showed us that in the last century.

Without a higher moral Law or standard for people to agree upon and follow (or an author and giver of that higher Law or standard), all that’s left is consensus of those who are most powerful and cunning. If there’s no lawgiver, no Messiah to save us from ourselves, then ultimately most people will find no meaning or purpose to life, no truth, life will have no intrinsic value.

Society may have to hunt down and jail criminals like Paul Bernardo or John Wayne Gacy to protect itself. But if we seriously believe there is no such thing a right and wrong, no truth, then it’s pointless condemning what they did. After all, when they committed their sexual abductions, tortures and murders, their personal definition of truth may have been dominance and self-gratification. Somebody may interject to say, “They had no right to impose their views on others or kill those women!” Why not? If there is no right or wrong, then there’s no basis to make such a claim.

What is truth?

Now, if there is such a thing as objective truth, where does it come from? Christianity says Jesus is the Truth. His crucifixion and Resurrection gave rise to a tidal wave of love and hope for millions of people for two thousand years.

Each person must decide if Jesus is the only saviour of the world. Personally, I’ve concluded the answer is Yes. Christ has utterly changed my life for forty-five years.

MDP

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: AN ALL-PERVADING PRESENCE?

2025-05-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

They say artificial intelligence (AI) knows all about everyone who has an Internet footprint: It knows who you are, where you live, what you do. Really? Out of curiosity I asked AI about myself. Its response is below. Hmmm. The only thing it got wrong was the number of my grandchildren (7 not 5). Very quick.

AI Overview

Learn more

Mark Davis Pickup is a Canadian Christian author and advocate. He is known for his work on issues related to disability, human life, and assisted suicide. He has written extensively and given numerous speeches on these topics. He currently resides in Beaumont, AB, with his wife and family.

Here's a more detailed look at his work and background:

· Advocate for Life and Disability:

Mark Pickup is a prominent voice in the pro-life movement and a strong advocate for the rights and dignity of people with disabilities.

· Multiple Sclerosis Diagnosis:

He was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 30, which significantly impacted his life and career path.

· Writer and Speaker:

After leaving the workforce due to his condition, he dedicated himself to writing, speaking, and advocating on issues he felt strongly about.

· Author of "To be, or not to be...":

He wrote a documentary, "To be, or not to be... the Human Family. (A disabled man's plea)," which focused on the issue of assisted suicide and the dignity of human life.

· HumanLifeMatters.org:

He runs a blog called HumanLifeMatters.org where he writes about Christian faith, ethics, and his views on various issues.

· Multiple Awards:

He has received several awards for his work, including a Governor General's Medal for community service and the Monsignor Bill Irwin Award for Ethical Excellence.

· Family:

He lives in Beaumont, AB, with his wife LaRee, and they have two children and five grandchildren.

IS THERE ABSOLUTE TRUTH?

2025-05-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Unpopular message

Truth is rarely fashionable—but it is knowable. The truth is knowable because Jesus Christ is truth and the He is the saviour of the world, and we can know Him.

21^st century relativism

People must rely on laws as the only recourse for moral direction. But even laws can be changed with a simple majority vote and a stroke of a legislative pen. In a world of relativism, there is no higher Truth that exists apart from what legislatures declare and enforce. The final arbiter of truth is power. Change the government and what was right and true yesterday is usurped by a new set of standards and a different set of lawmakers. What was previously unthinkable can becomes the law of the land. Germany showed us that in the last century.

Society may have to hunt down and jail criminals like Paul Bernardo or John Wayne Gacy to protect itself. But if we seriously believe there is no such thing a right and wrong, no truth, then it’s pointless condemning what they did. After all, when they committed their sexual abductions, tortures and murders, their personal definition of truth may have been dominance and self-gratification. Somebody may interject to say, “They had no right to impose their views on others or kill those women!” Why not? If there is no right and wrong, then there’s no basis to make such a claim.

What is truth?

That’s why I find 21^st Century relativists suspect. In one breath they maintain there is no objective right and wrong, no absolute Truth. In the next breath they’re decrying the destruction of the rain forests, or using animals in medical experimentation, or they’re marching in the streets against globalization or lawful deportation of illegal aliens. Methinks the relativist believes in objective truth more than he’s letting on and he expects the rest of us to agree (or at least acquiesce). Why? Well, according to the relativist, each person has his personal truth, his own standard of right and wrong, and he must not inflict his standards or morals on others. But that is exactly what relativists are doing when they march in the streets shouting and waving banners and destroying property. Even politicians like the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, are defying legal enforce under federal law which supersedes state and local laws. If politicians can pick and choose which they will obey and which law they will ignore or defy, what's to stop people under their authority denying or defying state or municipal laws? What good for the goose is good for the gander.

Each person must decide if Jesus is the only saviour of the world. Personally, I’ve concluded the answer is Yes. Christ has utterly changed my life for forty-five years.

TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS

2025-05-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

Turn Your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full upon His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.

The hymn Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus was written by Helen Howarth Lemmel in 1922. Helen went blind in her mid-forties. Her husband left her destitute. She was blind when she wrote the beloved hymn Turn Your eyes Upon Jesus.

What she lacked in earthly possessions was made up by her blazing living faith in Christ. She continued in Christian serve well into her 90s. She could not see with the eyes of her body, but she had 20/20 vision when it came to seeing with the eyes of her heart and soul. Hymnologist Bill Cottrill wrote this about Helen Lemmel:

“The frail old woman sits at a table in her tiny room in Seattle, Washington. Before her is a small plastic organ–one such as a child might have. But, as she fingers the keys and sings, her poor surroundings seem to fade from view, her face shines with the light of heaven, and tears trickle down her time-lined cheeks. Perhaps in her mind she is seated at a majestic pipe organ in some ornate cathedral. But the place doesn’t matter. She is intent on worshiping her Saviour.

The woman’s name is Helen. In her nineties at the time described, and with little of this world’s goods, her faith sustained her.”[2]

Adult acquired disability is a terrible shock. What was is no more. For Helen Lemmel it was blindness beginning in her 40s. For me it was progressive disability of multiple sclerosis beginning at the age of 30.

I am a witness to the truth of Helen’s beautiful hymn. In my wide-eyed terror of serious neurological disease and a creeping paralysis that took me from being healthy and able bodied to triplegic (paralysis in three limbs). Her hymn strikes a full chord. The things of earth did grow strangely dim—like catastrophic disability—when I kept my eyes on that wonderful face of Jesus.

When I was at a certain point of disability when legs no longer worked and I had serious paralysis in my right arm, my artist son drew a picture of Jesus portrayed by Robert Powell in the 1977 TV series Jesus of Nazareth. It was my favourite portrayal of Jesus until Passion of the Christ (2004).

I’m 72 now. Most of my adult life has been battling aggressive MS. Christ has been with me (and my wife) every step of that journey. I’ll keep your eyes upon Jesus. It won’t be long before I stand before His wonderful face.

“Now we see a poor reflection as in a mirror; Then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” —1 Corinthians 13.12

[1] Inspired by Hebrews 12:1-2.

[2] Robert Cottril, Today in 1864 — Hellen Lemmel Born, (Wordwise: With Robert Cottrill, 14 November 2022 https://wordwisebiblestudies.com/today-in-1864-helen-lemmel-born/

FELLOWSHIP FOR PERFORMING ARTS: GOSPEL OF MARK 16

2025-04-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Max Mclean is a talented actor. He is the founder and artistic director of Christian Fellowship for Performing Arts. I invite you to watch his 3:56-minute rendition of the Gospel of Mark Chapter 16.

Click the link below and enjoy!

Mark 16