This Easter, Canada Needs Much More Than Quiet Reflection

Something unexpected happened at Canada’s National Prayer Breakfast last week. In a room packed with nearly 2,000 people — politicians, faith leaders, diplomats, and ordinary citizens — an increasingly partisan nation paused. It breathed. And for a moment, it remembered who it is.

I was there. And as we approach Easter, I've been unable to stop thinking about it.

A Room That Felt Like a Canadian Family
The 60th annual National Prayer Breakfast took place March 24 in Ottawa, in the shadow of Parliament Hill. The theme was drawn from Hebrews 12: "You are not alone." Given the historical moment Canada finds itself in — trade tensions with our largest neighbour, economic uncertainty, and a world fractured by division — it was about as fitting a theme as I can imagine.

Prime Minister Carney and Conservative Leader Poilievre were both in attendance. In a political climate so often defined by partisan point-scoring, watching these two leaders share a room — and a message — struck me deeply. As Green Party Leader Elizabeth May put it: “At these prayer breakfasts, we are a family, regardless of partisanship.” It felt, in a word, very Canadian.

The Emotional Heart of the Morning
But the moment that stopped the room didn’t come from a prime minister or an opposition leader. It came from the MP representing Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, who spoke about a terrible mass shooting that had shaken his community — and the story of students who tried to protect each other while it was happening.

This kind of tragedy doesn’t happen often in Canada. But what followed speaks to who we are. Our national leaders — across party lines — came together in solidarity, not to compete, but to stand with a community in heartbreak. That, I thought, is the best of what it means to be Canadian: that we are each other’s keepers, and in moments of crisis, we show up for one another.

What Our Leaders Said — and What It Means for All of Us
Prime Minister Carney opened his remarks with a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, describing God’s gift of His Son as the ultimate act of generosity. He challenged everyone in the room to remember that they are in their positions not because of their own efforts alone, but because of what others — and what God — have done for them. Our names will be forgotten, he said. What lives on is our generosity. As a leader at Children Believe for the past six years, I needed to hear that. Whatever we’ve achieved, we’ve achieved together — and what will be remembered is not a title or a tenure, but the generosity we extended to others.

Poilievre, for his part, spoke on accountability — the idea that leaders are accountable not just to the electorate, but ultimately to God. And he closed with the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. In that moment, both leaders seemed to transcend politics and speak to something deeper in us.

Keynote speaker Pinball Clemons — Canadian football Hall of Famer and GM of the Toronto Argonauts — drew from the Good Samaritan. He urged us to stop asking what will happen to us if we stop to help, and start asking what happens to the other person if we don’t. “Every being on Earth is our ally,” he said. “Let’s love and respect each other regardless of boundaries.”

Run the Race with Endurance — It's an Easter Message Too
Hebrews 12 — the text that anchored the breakfast — is one of the great Easter passages. It speaks of running the race with endurance, letting go of what holds us back, and fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. We run surrounded by a cloud of witnesses: all who faced their own hills and kept going.

This Easter, that image feels more urgent than ever. We are not new to this race. Canada has faced moments of great uncertainty before — and found its way through, not by looking inward, but by looking out for each other. Not by running faster, but by running together.

I learned this lesson as a runner. Hills are hard. But hills make you strong. And what makes running joyful — truly joyful — is running with others. The pace doesn't have to be fast. It just has to be shared.

What Should Canadians Be Praying For This Easter?
Pray for our national leaders. They carry enormous weight in a difficult season, and they need wisdom, humility, and courage — the same things they asked for themselves in Ottawa. 

Pray for communities in grief — like the one in Tumbler Ridge — who remind us that tragedy is not abstract, and that our solidarity must be more than political gesture.

Pray for the gift of generosity. In times of threat and economic anxiety, the instinct is to turn inward. The Christian instinct — the Canadian instinct at its best — is to turn outward, toward the neighbour, the stranger, the child on the other side of the world who needs someone to care.

And pray for endurance. Not the breathless, grinding kind. The grounded, purposeful kind — the kind that comes from running with others, from belonging to something larger than yourself.

A Life Marked by Gratitude
Easter is, at its core, a story of sacrifice freely given and new life unexpectedly received. It is the ultimate act of generosity. And it is an invitation — every year, in every season — to live our lives the same way.

After I got back from Ottawa, I was thrilled by an unexpected gift from a foundation that was more generous than anything they’d given before. I had no idea what inspired them. But generosity works that way. You give because you’ve received. And what you give lives on in ways you can’t predict or control.

That is the Christian life. That is the Canadian life at its best. And this Easter, I believe it is also the call of the moment — to be generous, to be humble, to be each other's keeper.

We are not alone. Let's run like it.