Everyone knows what happened to the trucker convoy in Ottawa: the worst possible outcome, the police sent in to brutally and violently clear the protestors, downtown turned into a police state with barricades and checkpoints, frozen bank accounts, arrests, trucks impounded, commercial licenses revoked, and on and on, vengeful persecution from a totally lawless government, no federal mandates removed.
So does that mean evil has won?
Not at all. Tonight I went to a local freedom group meeting where several of the beautiful truckers from our area spoke. As one of them put it, we are resourceful. We always find a way to deal with whatever they throw at us. The fight isn’t over.
They told us about a Jericho march they did around the parliament building. On the seventh day the truckers were told to blow their horns for seven minutes. After they did, a fog descended and covered the parliament building for about ten minutes before lifting off. There was no fog anywhere else in the area, and the entire rest of the day was clear.
The takeaway, for them, was obvious: God was with them.
Almost all of them mentioned God in some fashion. One of the truckers’ wives, who accompanied her husband, wept as she spoke of the love, of the many Christians in Ottawa, of their daily morning devotions. One told a story of a trucker who called his truck cab “the confessional” because so many people came all day to talk about their suffering over the last two years. That particular trucker was not religious, but by the end of the time he was.
I wish I could have recorded their stories, but we are not allowed phones at the meetings because the government tracks us. However, it is impossible not to be struck by the absolute contrast between the way the mainstream media paints these beautiful heroes, and who they really are: deeply good, selfless, loving, hard-working, honest, salt-of-the-earth Canadians who represent the best our country has. These are the people our sneering Prime Minister paints as racist, misogynist, violent, rapists, and every other insult he can think of. Deceived by his rhetoric and a paid-off press which does his bidding, millions of their fellow Canadians hate them too.
The truckers were asked to state the high and low points of their time in Ottawa. One spoke eloquently of his low point being when absolute evil descended on their happy, peaceful festival in the form of the riot police. The trucker’s wife spoke about how at that point she saw the reality of what we are dealing with; that before, she had wondered if she was crazy, but the violence revealed the true face of our opponent.
This is so clearly a battle between good and evil, and that becomes more and more apparent by the day. I think of it like a popup book: when closed, it is flat and level, but when opened, the figures stand up and reveal their shapes. Our popup book has opened.
I have reached a point where the evil no longer shocks or overcomes me. I have been depressed, discouraged, and defeated by the relentless advance of bad and worse news for two years now. I was holding on to the idea of “normality” that we had before, or thought we had, and every piece of news was a shock.
However, I now understand that we are in a battle between good and evil. Evil will fight. It will throw its worst at us. It will appear that it’s winning.
But good cannot be overcome by evil. Evil can persecute it, beat it, steal from it, lie and malign it and do its worst. But it will never defeat it. The beautiful gift of this time has been the found community of good, loving, and faithful humans who are committed to holding the light, to loving one another, to standing against the darkness.
Evil cannot triumph over good because good is from God. God is good. God has already triumphed over evil in Jesus on the cross and in his resurrection which destroyed death. We have read the book of Revelations and know how the story ends. Death, Satan, evil, and sin will be destroyed forever, and those who have put their faith in Jesus and come over to the side of good will live with him forever out of the reach of anything bad. We will not ultimately lose out by standing on the side of good now, even though we suffer for it in the meantime.
Several of the truckers spoke of the absolute peace they felt even in the midst of violence and opposition. They knew that peace came from God.
I have felt that, too. This is “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, [which] guard[s] your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).
Justin Trudeau, Doug Ford, and the rest of the politicians and public health officials can’t take that from me. They can take away my freedoms, but they can’t rob me of what only God can give.
I’m grateful for this, because it’s relatively new for me. Even though I’ve been a Christian for a long time, I grew up in an extremely abusive home and have tended to deal with difficulty by fleeing or avoiding it. But I’ve found that peace isn’t obtained by living in maximum comfort: it’s obtained by standing in the middle of the storm and throwing your arms open wide to invite God’s presence, trusting that he will take care of you. It’s about facing evil without fear, because as David said in his beautiful Psalm 23:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
I have been reciting psalm 23 a lot also. When 2 shocking moments happened to me last august over 2 days my trust in anything or anybody, even family, was blown to smithereens and I knew I had only God. Only Jesus. Soon, as I prayed and reached out, an incredible peace descended on me. When I can’t sleep I recall actual moments where Jesus faced his enemies and those he touched like the woman at the well and I relax and sleep. I was walking in the woods this fall and as I thought about random stuff a still small voice interrupted me and said “I am going to win”. He will. I see this whole thing as Satans plan. He needs humans to do it. This betrayer is not God. The digital age has made it easier for the plan but Gods is the bigger plan. God is bigger than the current storm. Thanks for telling us about the March around the building. I have this story to calm me in the night and give me hope.
Thanks for this post.
I tried to leave a heart but there was an error.