citizenship

After almost 14 years of being in Canada, I became officially a Canadian citizenship as of yesterday.

It has been a very long journey, but time does feel that it passes very fast. Soon I might even have spent more years in Canada than in my country of birth in Guatemala.

How do I feel about it? Well, I cannot say I feel any different. Of course I am excited and happy with this milestone. But I think it take some more time to have my feeling settle about this event. One thing that I do keep in mind and I need to remind myself more often is God's faithfulness.

I don't think I could have come to Canada to study in the first place, if it wasn't for the blessings that God bestowed on me. He was able to keep me sharp and focused on my studies, and was able to blessed my parents with the finances to support me.

During my time in undergrad, there were many challenging times, ranging from academics to spiritual matters, and I believe I was able to survive by the grace of God.

Even after my undergrad, God granted me a job, so that I can establish myself financially and work towards my permanent residence, and then now to accomplished the requirements to become a citizen.

This is just a very high level summary of what God has done, and I don't think a blog post sufficed to express the gratitude I have for my God.

Being a citizen of Canada is very good, as it is considered a pretty good country, and you can travel to many places easily, and it was a good welfare and health care system (comparatively), and people are pretty nice in general.

Extrapolating a bit further, what is important it is to remind myself that it is just a transient thing, and that we are all citizens of heaven. To truly know that we are God's people it has great advantages for us, as we are protected by God, and we get to be recipients of His blessings, and get an identity in Christ.

There are responsibilities to be fulfilled as a Canadian citizen. Similarly, there are responsibilities as a citizen of heaven, to participate in God's Kingdom, to server others, to be God's ambassadors, to proclaim the word of truth, to love.