CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 1, 2023 – I’m a Canadian. I’m also a little sister. These two identities are connected, so bear with me.

I have a big sister who’s also a Canadian.

Canadians have a reputation both inside and outside the country for being polite. Sometimes our politeness is misconstrued as weakness. We are, as they say, polite to a fault.

Until we’re not.

Politeness and patience tend to go hand in hand, along with tolerance and mercy. To be polite, patient, tolerant, and merciful are certainly not qualities of a weak soul. On the contrary, it takes immense strength of character to be any of those things let alone all of them, especially in the face of abuse.

I was a typical little sister when I was a kid – always trying to push boundaries but ending up pushing people’s buttons instead. I lived by my own rules (I was an atheist) and I did what I wanted. It was my way or the highway, so I spent a good deal of my teenage years hitchhiking alone along lonely roads, never really knowing where I was going, but at least believing I was going somewhere… until I ended up right back where I started, with a few more enemies under my belt.

This is where my sister comes in. My sister, as I mentioned, is Canadian, but she’s not only Canadian, she’s quintessentially Canadian – polite to a fault, patient, tolerant, etc. That is, she’s all those things until you push her too far, and then she goes all Jesus in the temple, whipping the moneychangers and overturning tables. Very few have seen my sister make the switch from polite Canadian to furious Jesus, but I have. I, her little sister, know that change well. I’ve only seen it a few times in my life, but those few times were enough for me. I learned never to push her to that point again.

We Canadians are a strange people. Even as we’re told by those paid to lead us that we’re a “post-nation” with no national culture or character, we collectively stoically accept the denunciation in a quintessentially Canadian way – we smile politely and tolerate it, though we don’t agree with it. Our silence in the face of our leaders’ mockery is likely misconstrued as weakness. Let it be so misconstrued. My sister is a Canadian and most Canadians are like my sister. They tolerate and tolerate and tolerate until they don’t. And just like Jesus in the temple – and just like God, when he’s finally had enough – the unleashing of our righteous Canadian anger will be, when it comes, Biblical.

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It was only as an adult that I learned about all the times my sister wheeled-and-dealed behind the scenes to persuade kids not to beat me up after school or talk smack about me in the cafeteria. My sister, you see, as well as being quintessentially politely Canadian, was also a top athlete, a straight-A student, model pretty, and a party girl in the cool crowd. This gave her street cred with all the cliques at school as well as with the teachers. So people listened to her and tolerated me for no other reason than I was her little sister.

She’s since moved on and is applying her protector skills to her own offspring, some of whom seem to have inherited the same rebellious streak as I have and so need the same wheeling-and-dealing behind the scenes. And she continues to do what needs to be done with the same gracious smile and the same persuasive politeness she displayed all those years ago, with the same good results.

God and Jesus are now my big sister. That is, God and Jesus now play the role my big sister used to play. That is, God and Jesus no longer hide behind my big sister, pretending they’re not there protecting me through her. Now they just outright protect me. They feed me their words and direct my steps. My lonely road is now their High Way, but I don’t walk alone anymore: God and Jesus are always with me.

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The takeaway from all this?

I’m a Canadian.

I’m also Jesus’ little sister.

You mess with me, you mess with God.

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But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Matthew 18:6