September 30 marks a relatively new "cause day" in Canada. Since 2013, the day has been set aside as "Orange Shirt Day", a day to remember and honour the survivors of a dark chapter in Canadian history: residential schools.

I've always been fascinated by the amount of cross-promotion there is within media companies. I'm not just talking about the ads for shows on the same TV networks that you'll hear during a pro football game. That's one form, but at least that isn't subtle. There's all kinds of other stuff going on, and it's become a bit of a hobby of mine to see whether I can catch the more subtle stuff.

I shot a video today for my congregation, and am sharing it here as the post for tonight. Once you watch (it's only a few minutes), you can read more about it in John 16:1-33.

Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant, keeping the law of God perfectly. He kept the Sabbath, the day of rest on the seventh day of the week. And now, we New Testament Christians, we are freed from needing to observe that day in the same was as ancient Israel. We now find our sabbath rest in Jesus (Colossians 2:16-17, Hebrews 4:8-10); we don't have to work to enter the rest of God.

One of the significant impacts of this pandemic is that people are physically distanced from each other. Well, duh, you might say, but stick with me for a minute.

For so many people, a handshake, a hug, a high-five, are so brief but so meaningful in terms of connection. There are reports out there (I’d look them up if I had more energy; if someone wants to source these for me, that’d be great...) that we need a certain amount of physical contact in a day to be healthy. Tragically, it’s reported that infants can even die without adequate physical touch.

I have exactly two minutes to post this before it's tomorrow. That's not going to happen. What else isn't going to happen is that I'm going to become legalistic about this thing. So tonight I share with you a couple videos I made today as we stepped into the world of live-streaming after it's become one of the only ways to reach groups of people. We all wish we could change the channel to watch something other than coronavirus and all the news around that.

My boys are big into Calvin and Hobbes these days, as I’ve been for a long time. One of the anthology collections is called “The Days are Just Packed”, and that’s a great title for today’s post. Of course, I'm not using it ironically; as much as I'd love to sit in a tree all day with a water balloon in hand in the event that Susie doesn't happen to walk under that particular tree, it's just not going to happen. Not today, anyway.