Four months ago, I managed the federal election campaign for CHP candidate Mike Schouten here in Cloverdale. We thought we ran an excellent campaign. We spent months before the writ dropped meeting reporters, writing letters to the editor, and issuing press releases to establish our presence in the riding. During the campaign we created several videos, distributed tens of thousands of flyers, and made an excellent showing at both all-candidates’ meetings. On election night, we didn’t do nearly as well as we thought we could; but we were content. But on verification day, we discovered that—due to a simple clerical error on election night—nearly a third of our votes actually belonged to another candidate. During this summer Mike and I have done a lot of soul searching. In a little more than half a year, we will once again meet in Abbotsford for CHP Canada’s national convention. We’ll elect a new board, and discuss policy and strategy. Old friends will become reacquainted, and new friendships will form. We’ll look at the last quarter-century, and plot a course for the next. In the months since the election, I have had a number of ideas that I’m looking forward to sharing with you at the convention. But do you know what I’ve learned over the last four months? None of it matters. Not the campaign, not the convention, not a single one of my wonderful ideas. In his 1942 essay “First and Second Things”, C.S. Lewis says, “The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping. The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication. It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman—glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens?... Every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made.” This principle—that we lose the greater good when we sacrifice all for the lesser good—is evident in the conclusion of the late Jack Layton’s letter to Canadians: “My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.” The very thing we cannot do is say, “let us…and we will change the world.” This thing, this making things better, is a second thing; and if we strive to do it we will lose it. For nearly a century—certainly since the first World War—the overriding goal of our civilization was the preservation or improvement of it, to which Lewis asked, “if it were true that civilization will never be safe till it is put second, that immediately raises the question, second to what? What is the first thing? The only reply I can offer here is that if we do not know, then the first and only truly practical thing is to set about finding out.” Like Lewis, we know the first thing. The Apostle Paul told us the answer, for instance, in his letter to the Ephesians, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph 3:20, 21, ESV.) The reason I managed—and hope to manage again for many elections to come—Mike Schouten’s campaign; the reason I will be a delegate at this next convention, and for many to come; the reason I will continue to donate my money, time, and ideas to CHP Canada has nothing to do with the effect I hope they’ll have. I must do all these things, only so that God would be glorified throughout all generations; and I know that when I put God first, He will do far more abundantly than I can ask or think—and that is sufficient. So I hope you will join me next year in Abbotsford to set the course for CHP Canada. Not after the manner of Captains Ahab (pursuing Moby Dick, the great white whale) or Stubing (of Love Boat fame), but after the manner of Reepicheep—in my mind, C.S. Lewis’s greatest mortal character—who said, “While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.” If we seek God’s Kingdom with such singular purpose, we may find that our country flourishes; to which we will say: “to God be the glory, great things He has done.”