oh canada...

i don't know that i could sing our national anthem had they not tacked on that "o" -

That direct address to the nation itself... that can become... a sigh, a sob, a plea...
Oh, Canada, you, the rocky mountains and quilted plains...
Lovely frigid land, with brief summer reprieve...
Wide open spaces hemmed in by your wild oceans...
You, shaped and formed - every treed slope and rocky river -  by the Creator Himself.
Your cities are brimming with His people; and i hear the plea in our anthem go far deeper than the geography of a nation... to the very ones who inhabit it...
Oh, Canada...
In freedom choosing bondage; choosing death over life; taking the burden of ascribing the title "worthy of life" - and stingily allocating it to too few.  It's not ours to give - and we fail to see that the One to whom the burden belongs is generous and just, and He breathes the very life we scorn...
We've too often overlooked the widows and the fatherless - because all we're ever asked or expected to give is money - and we have so. much. more. than that pittance to give, but we've forgotten how. Instead we sit back, as instructed, and open our wallets and let the "professionals" take care of the broken families.
Oh, Canada...
Debating His existence while the very rocks we stand on long to cry out. 
God keep our land.