“Sentimentality is simply the heart’s way of remembering what the mind never wants to let go.” -Anonymous

Did you know that God is sentimental? In the church calendar we recently celebrated Pentecost Sunday which was a special Jewish day long before that. The original Pentecost festival was a celebration of the Torah (law of God) to Israel. “The law would shape them as a people with whom God would dwell. God’s presence with them would be evidenced in the tabernacle that traveled with them. On the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, God comes to indwell his people, the new temple, by the Holy Spirit” (Stanley W. Green). Pentecost for the Israelites is also about offering the first fruits of their barley harvest to God, which is comparable to the next Pentecost where God offers us the first fruits of the Spirit.

Surely God could have sent the Holy Spirit as soon as Jesus was resurrected and ascended, but He waited until the festival day of Pentecost. ‘Pentecost’ literally means ‘count 50 or fiftieth’. Numbers are important to God, especially the number 50, which is the special year of Jubilee in the Old Testament. Maybe God likes to build on our human understanding to make it more memorable for minds and hearts? Could it be that a sentimentality like this helps us remember the things we should never let go of? This type of holy sentimentality is not a weakness; it is the heart remembering what truly matters. In this context, to be sentimental is to honor the moments that shape us and the sacred events that fill our lives with meaning.

This Pentecost the church I work at had several people praying in their mother tongue at the same time! It gave us a sense of what it would have felt like during the Pentecost in Acts 2 when numerous Galilean believers were speaking in foreign languages after receiving the Holy Spirit. What seemed like tongues of fire appeared and rested above them as they met for prayer in Jerusalem and then in the streets Jews who had gathered from different nations for the Pentecost Festival heard them speaking in their own native language. They were amazed. The Holy Spirit made it clear that day that the Good News is for all nations! One old church tradition for Pentecost Sunday is to scatter red rose petals (which resemble tongues of fire) on the people as they enter the church that day. We should do more to commemorate Pentecost!

After several marathon sittings in the Manitoba Legislature, the NDP passed its annual budget last week. According to Premier Wab Kinew, this budget will remove the PST from grocery bills.

However, most grocery products are already PST exempt. The exceptions are soft drinks, snack foods such as potato chips, and take-out meals. These items are generally not considered essential grocery items.

But since this NDP government apparently does consider these items essential, they will now be PST exempt. Initially, this exemption only applied to large grocery chains like Sobeys and not to small mom-and-pop shops.

This didn’t square well with the NDP’s anti-big business rhetoric, so it quickly amended the budget to include smaller stores as well. One thing it did not do was apply the PST exemption to restaurants. What this means is that takeout meals are tax exempt at large grocery chains but still taxed at full price in local restaurants.

In the last election, Canadians were promised that Prime Minister Mark Carney would deliver the fastest-growing economy in the G7, and as of last Friday, Canada finds itself as the only G7 nation officially in a recession.

According to Statistic Canada, the country has met the very definition of a recession after the economy contracted for the second consecutive quarter.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre responded bluntly, “The recession is real.”

He added that it translates to empty stomachs, empty grocery baskets, and empty bank accounts for many Canadians. “It means homeowners tossing and turning in bed at night, wondering how they will make the next mortgage payment.” That’s why Conservatives called on Carney to hold an emergency debate on the economy. In fact, had an emergency debate been scheduled, it would have given the Liberal government an opportunity to tell Canadians about their plan to reverse this recession and the resulting inflation. Sadly, it didn’t happen.