Sunday Rest

“Keep holy the Lord’s day.”  To keep the Lord’s Day as it ought, we need to do more than worship.  God always intended that there be a day or rest in the week. From Genesis, with God resting from creation on the 7^th day to all of the Jewish laws forbidding labor on the Sabbath, it is clear that we are to rest on Sunday as a part of fulfilling God’s command to keep the day holy.  Jesus did show us that sometimes people do need to work.  That ought to be the exception.  By necessity, people who minister to others, man or beast, need to work on Sunday.  But the rest of us, need to step back from our jobs and chores and recharge.  Sunday is a day for people to focus on God and relationships, not work.  It is a day for us, if needed, to reconnect with God and people.  Sunday anchors us to what is important-our relationships with God and others in our lives.  Stresses of the job and other things we encounter during the week can disconnect us from God, if we are not careful.  They can disconnect us from loving others, if we are not careful.  The more one thinks about it, the more necessary God’s plan for the Sabbath becomes  for our spiritual and physical health.  Likewise, we ought to refrain from activities which would cause others to miss the Sabbath rest.  So many things that we do, shopping, dining, going to movies, that we may think of as restful are the cause of someone else having to work on Sunday.  So, we need to think about our schedules and our activities.  Can what we planned to do on Sunday, be done on another day?  Even if these people still need to work because of the state of society, our not going out will ease the hassle of their workday.  There is a direct correlation between the increasing hours of labor on Sunday and the growing distance between God and society in general.