Creation of Canada

On the sixth day God turned to Archangel Gabriel and said:
"Today I am going to create a land called Canada, it will be a land of outstanding natural beauty. It shall have tall majestic mountains full of mountain goats and eagles, beautiful sparkling lakes bountiful with bass and trout, forests full of elk and moose, high cliffs over-looking sandy beaches with an abundance of sea life, and rivers stocked with salmon." God continued, "I shall make the land rich in oil so as to make the inhabitants prosper, I shall call these inhabitants Canadians, and they shall be known as the most friendly people on the earth."
"But Lord," asked Gabriel, "don't you think you are being too generous to these Canadians?" "Not really," replied God, "just wait and see the neighbours I am going to give them."

So that was a little tale that I found hidden away in someone else's blog. I liked it so much, because of the offbeat humor and the Gabriel reference, that I've been meaning to put it up for some time now. I think that we can all learn a few good lessons from it, though. Every gold nugget of humor contains a bit of truth, or it wouldn't be as funny. Number one lesson has got to be the fact that whenever God gives you plentiful bounty out of grace, there will always be factors in place to balance the situation. No one has it completely on easy street. It may seem that some do; having success with women or money or whatever. However, I guarantee that there are extra circumstances in place that that person has to deal with that you or I know nothing about. God doesn't just heap blessings on the undeserving, that's true. But when he DOES give them to the deserving, he doesn't want the blessings themselves to become stumbling blocks.
The second lesson to learn is more about responsibility. When God places people, countries, things in positions of leadership, he also places responsibility in the hands of those so bestowed. The fact that we can be looked upon as "bad neighbors" means that, though much has been given to this country (and therefore much is expected) we have not lived up to it. That doesn't mean in terms of economic or foreign policies, etc. I'm talking in a strict spiritual sense. We, like so many other countries and cultures, are going the way of excess. We live in mediocrity and worship gods named False Progression and Politics. No nation like this was meant to stand. We have become haughty and squander our position. And this isn't America bashing, this is an admonition to the vast majority of countries out there. None of us are living up to what we should/could be. As one of my favorite songs says, "We were meant to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves... We want more than the wars of our fathers... We were meant to live for so much more..." We really were, ALL of us destined for better/greater/grander things. It's the brass ring that we think we're reaching so far and so hard to get, but in fact we keep falling short because we're not trying as hard as we'd like to think. Live up to expectations, everyone. It seems to be what most of my blogs are starting to say, nowadays. But, then again, we live in shortened times. Not much time is left to do the things we need to, so lets all shape up today so we can shape tomorrow correctly. Awesome. I knew you'd agree.

So sayeth The Brad...