Today's soundtrack was the discography of iconic Canadian band Glass Tiger, as I revisited it ahead of their Peachfest show tonight in Penticton. "The Thin Red Line" was one of the first cassette tapes I ever owned. (Yes, the nostalgia industry is now targeting my generation. I'm OK with that.) It's funny how all music hits different as an adult than when growing up, but one line in particular stuck with me today:
Look at me, I'm watching worlds crumble.
To my Christian friends, and particularly leaders in the Christian Church:
I'm seeing more and more posts on Facebook expressing dismay at how Facebook seems to be "censoring" things that have a traditionally Christian viewpoint. There is an increasing amount of hand-wringing over this, which is a bit confusing to me, since the hand-wringing is happening on...Facebook. (The irony of someone using Facebook to comment, "Fascistbook" on a post of this sort isn't even subtle.)
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.
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.
In this space about 5 minutes ago was a big long post offering some hope amid the gripping fear that's been so amplified in the last 24 hours. When I hit save, something went wrong and I lost the whole thing. So even this post has been cancelled. How ironic. I may or may not be able re-capture that lightning in a bottle, so I'll just leave you with what was probably the most important part of that post anyway: the Word of God. Amid all the fear and legitimate concern in our world right now, the one thing that has not been cancelled is the promise of God.
I got home from an extremely busy day, ready to write about "the four loves", following on the addled post from last night. Four aspects of love are captured by four different Greek words, and they're all worth considering.
But as I was relaxing for a little bit and turned on the TV for some sports highlights, I heard the news that the NBA (professional basketball in the US and Canada) was suspending its season due to a player having tested positive for coronavirus.
Whoa.
Now that you've got that Haddaway song in your head (you're welcome - I love the 90s too), this is a truly important question that we need to answer: what is love?
Or maybe the song in your head is Tina Turner's. It's a poignant question, really: "What's love, but a sweet- old-fashioned notion?" Sadly, our culture would pat Tina on the head and think she is the sweet old-fashioned one for thinking love could be such a thing.
Where’s the line between prudence and fear?
Given the hysterics that are happening over this past week, I’d say the line is between one and more than one packages of toilet paper.
People who are stockpiling 90+ rolls are doing so not because there’s a possibility that if you have coronavirus, you'll have to be quarantined for about 14 days. The math simply doesn't add up. That's more than six rolls a day while quarantined. That's not reasonable.
I came across this article recently. It struck me while I read it (and it's worth a read for all who are seeking to be cultural exegetes) that, for the Christian, the answer to the primary question of the article —"Something is stopping us from creating the families we claim to desire. But what?"—is stunningly simple: removing Yahweh from the equation.
