Election Day

Today is Federal Election Day. I'm going to walk to the Senior's Centre soon and cast my ballot. I don't know who's going to win in my riding. The Liberal incumbent is a very popular guy and unless people are lumping him in with the entire party for the blame which they seem to be catching for the Sponsorship Scandal corruption I would think he'd have a good chance to be reelected. I've seen a lot more NDP signs around town than I did in the last election. I didn't see a whole lot of Conservative signs but people might just jump on the bandwagon and vote for the winning team according to the polls.

Last week after a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service one local pastor gave me a couple of posters and asked me to post them and to encourage the people in our church to vote for a "Marriage Friendly" candidate. By that I'm pretty sure he meant hetero-marriage friendly, not friendly to gays and lesbians who want to marry. I took the posters and didn't get into an argument with the guy but I didn't post them nor did I encourage people to vote based on certain issues.

Here's what I did say in my announcements:
"This week I attended some services during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and preached at one of them. After one of the services a pastor from another church gave me a couple of posters that are meant to encourage people in our churches to vote, but they also encourage people to vote in a certain way based on certain issues. So I decided not to post those posters and not to talk about specific issues when it comes to this election. I will encourage you to vote if you are eligible. The only thing I will say is to remember that if we are Christians, we are Christians in the voting booth as well. By saying that I’m not endorsing any party or candidate. I only want to say that Christ calls us to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbours as ourselves. We can do that as we vote as well."

So, we'll see how things go today. If you're one of the Canadians who reads this, go and vote. If you don't know who to vote for then spoil your ballot. At least that shows you care about the process and that you're not completely apathetic.