Keep the Lord's Day

I am tired more often than I admit. We have machines for everything, and I still go to bed with a buzzing head. That isn't a calendar problem. It's me, refusing to be a creature.

God gave His people a day. I used to hear that as a restriction. I'm trying to hear it as a gift.

Stopping

Keeping the Lord's Day is, among other things, a confession with your body: the world can run without you for a few hours. Anxious men hate that, because we think we're holding the beams up. I am one of those men.

I'm not trying to publish a list of forbidden fun. I want Sunday to be recognizably the Lord's. Gathered worship. Word and Table. Time with the church and with my household that isn't rushed. A pace that remembers Jesus is risen, so the outcome of the war isn't sitting on my to-do list.

Homeschool temptation

A family that works hard all week will treat Sunday like catch-up. Errands. Laundry. One more lesson. I've done it. We always paid for it later in the tone of the house.

The kids remember the feel of the day more than my speeches about rest. I want them to remember a feast, not a leftover Saturday.

The rest under the day

Hebrews says there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Its name is Christ. We don't keep the day to earn His welcome. We keep it because we've been welcomed, and because He knows I'll forget by Friday.

Come to church. Sit down. Receive. God has been meeting His people in rooms like this for a long time.

He is God. I am not. That's a decent place to start.