It was raining and green when our plane touched down in Abbotsford, British Columbia, the day before the 2010 Olympic opening ceremonies in Vancouver. Back home in Ontario, we'd left behind a white, iced-over landscape. Now we landed amidst clouded mountains, green fields, and trees preparing to burst into bloom.

"Welcome to the very first Spring Olympics," somebody joked.

My cousin Carolyn and I were headed to Vancouver to take part in an artists' initiative. We introduced ourselves at orientation that night as Soli Deo Gloria Ballet, a poet/storyteller and a classical ballet dancer, come to BC to serve alongside many other Christian artists as a witness for God in the world.

In the world is the right way to put it. Vancouver is a vastly multicultural city even on a normal day, but during the Olympics, the whole world came to its streets. For 10 days Carolyn and I did our thing on street corners, in a theater, and on stage at First Baptist Church, right downtown in the thick of everything.

Every day at FBC we'd perform for 10 or 15 minutes, then clear the stage for another artist to do the same. We'd have 15 or so artists per concert. The diversity was breathtaking. A gospel singer, a Celtic fiddler, a jazz pianist, a Rwandan folk/dance hall artist, a dance troupe performing modern and hip-hop, a First Nations singer, several rap groups — this, we thought as we enjoyed the music and the fellowship, is the body of Christ in Canada. Diverse and creative and so capable of being beautiful.

I saw something else in Vancouver that I don't often see in this northern nation of ours. Patriotism. People bursting with pride in being Canadian, faces painted red and white, waving hockey sticks with Canadian flags on the end. After I'd returned home, I was driving down the freeway and listening to commentators on the CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Company) asking whether this event, this upswell of Canadian identity and pride, had changed us forever.

Maybe it had, they thought.

Certainly the Olympics helped bolster my own sense of identity as a Canadian. My patriotic journey has been an unusual one. My grandmother was born and raised in Iowa, and though she moved after her marriage to the border city in Canada where my grandfather lived, she remained passionately American all her life. Her eight children were all born in Canada, but obtained dual citizenship early on, and they too developed a strong sense of American identity.

I grew up hearing about American history, American values, and American freedom. Living in Windsor, just a few blocks from the bridge to Detroit, didn't help. Most of our radio stations and TV shows were American. To this day I'm more comfortable measuring feet than meters, Fahrenheit than Celsius, and I'm way more comfortable talking American politics than Canadian!

In contrast to my American family members, most of my Canadian friends didn't seem to have much of a national identity. While Americans define themselves by what they are, Canadians tend to define themselves but what we're not — we're not American.

We don't have the kind of defining events in our history that shaped the United States. We didn't fight a revolution; we asked to be allowed to have our independence, please. We didn't create a startling new form of government; we kept the British model. We didn't form a melting pot of cultures. Instead, we're a truly multicultural country where everybody keeps their own identity as well as being Canadian: we're clearly English, French, Scottish, Mennonite, Indian, Chinese, German, etc. We haven't been the birthplace of new musical forms like rock 'n' roll, bluegrass, and jazz, but we have some of the best Celtic fiddlers and folk musicians in the world.

We're more European than the States in many ways — more liberal, morally and politically; more global in our perspective, perhaps. We're known for being polite and on good terms with everybody. When people ask me what's different about Canada, I tell them we drink a lot more tea here.

And that was OK. More than Americans, who often equate their faith with their country very closely, Canadian Christians are likely to be suspicious of too much patriotism. Love for country can divide our interests too much, we may think; our citizenship isn't here, it's in the kingdom of God.

But after many years of uncertainty about what makes me Canadian and why or if I should care, I've learned to love this northern land, not because of anything spectacular in our history or culture and not because I don't see the horrific things about Canadian culture that are an affront to God (our abortion laws are some of the most permissive in the world). No, I've learned to love my country because God does.

Have you ever asked yourself what it means to be a patriot and a Christian? It's easy when your country appears to be lining up with God's laws and priorities in the world, but what about when your country is messing up? Could you love your country, as a Christian, if your country were Nazi Germany? If your country, like mine, allowed abortion up to the moment of birth? If your country mistreated its indigenous peoples or made unjust laws or promoted ungodly culture or marketed evil?

I can, I've discovered. I can love my country despite all those things because a country is made up of people.

Who are we, as Canadians? We're me, and my friends at church, and my family (even the half-American ones), and my neighbors. America is, ultimately, just people too. And that means that not only can I love my country, I must love it.

I must love it because God loves it. I must serve it because God has called me to serve Him through people. And I must pray for it, "thy kingdom come in Canada," because what Canada needs more than anything is not a strong sense of northern identity or another Olympic medal or better laws or more tea. What Canada needs more than anything is humility before God so we can receive His grace.

During the Olympics, we stayed in an "artists village" just a block from Crescent Beach. Carolyn and I walked down on the beach every morning, breathing cold salty air, watching the sun come up. On sunny days flowers started blooming. The mountains in the distance were white-capped and shrouded in fog. British Columbia is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen (I would dare say, one of the most beautiful places on earth). It reminded me that our Canadian landscape, which forms a huge part of our national identity, is a gift from God.

Downtown in First Baptist Church, the people who wandered in and out were also gifts from God. The artists themselves. Homeless people. People of all colors and classes. Canadians and visiting Americans and Russians and Chinese. They came in to hear the music and watch the dances, to enter into our celebration of grace and God and culture. And as we tried to serve them through the arts, I was reminded of what loving my country requires of me, as a Christian.

First and foremost it requires that I pray, because God has His purposes for every individual and for every nation of individuals. Canada will be blessed and truly transformed when we seek and obey His priorities for us. We'll be blessed when our people are saved; we'll be blessed when we seek, as a country, to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

Loving my country then also requires that I act: that I reach out to my fellow Canadians with the gospel, that I get involved in justice here, and that I intercede for Canada when we fail. For a year a friend and I used to go stand on the sidewalk in front of our local hospital/abortion clinic every Wednesday morning, holding signs, talking to people who wanted to talk, and mostly asking God for His mercy and His intervention. I can get involved in God's plans for my country by voting, writing letters to the editor, making culture, volunteering — the list is endless. I can't do it all. But I can and should do a part.

Ultimately, I can love my country even in its failures by loving my God above all else. When I do, I'll learn to see and hear His heart for Canada — and for my neighbors to the south, and for the whole world. When God comes first, my patriotism will be tempered and shaped by my love for Him.

I loved Canada before I went to Vancouver, but I think my affection has deepened since then, in conjunction with my desire to see God's will done here. As our national anthem says, "God keep our land, glorious and free." Wherever you come from, may He keep your land as well — and through you, through us, through His body in each nation of the world, may His kingdom come.