The Sabbath: How Sunday Changed Me

As I have now reached the great age of two decades and a year, I look back fondly on the Sundays of my youth. I remember long drives between Pittsburgh and West Virginia for church, and how we often stopped to help those with car troubles. I remember running barefoot along our favorite bike trail after services. I remember the trying afternoons when the parents would take a nap and I’d be left in charge of my siblings who refused to listen to my wise and tender instructions (“Clean up now or so help me, I will eat all of your dessert tonight and not one crumb will remain!”) and instead called me Pharoah and She-Who-Rules-With-An-Iron-Fist.

However, it wasn’t until I was twenty that I really started to think about the Sabbath and what it all meant. For many years, I saw it as a day little different than any other. We spent a couple hours in church, we didn’t have school or work, and that was about it. I didn’t see what the big deal was. After all, hadn’t Jesus condemned the Sabbath and practically done away with it?

As I read the Bible with new eyes and looked for ways to put it into practice, I was convicted by my lack of reverence for the day. I read old books and saw how the heroes of our faith took Sunday extremely seriously. Yet I, in all my great understanding, had thrown out hundreds of years of tradition, wisdom, and insight. For what? So that I could buy things on Sunday? So I could continue to make items to sell? So I wouldn’t feel guilty when I picked up that extra shift?

The Sabbath is a gift, not a burden. It is a day to step back from our daily routines and to focus on God. To have our minds uncluttered by the stress of work and business and to turn our eyes to our wonderful Lord and Savior. Why then did I see it as a duty that must be performed with gritted teeth?

I knew something had to change, and I gave myself a few simple rules for Sunday. I wouldn’t buy or sell anything as is clearly stated in the Bible (Exodus 20:8-10, for one), I wouldn’t be online, I wouldn’t do any work (in my case, nothing related to creating things to sell or going to my physical job), and I wouldn’t read any books that weren’t theology related.

The first several months were tedious. I was bored. I was frustrated. I remember one Sunday that I had several Etsy orders to make and ship. I’d been working all week and hadn’t had time. Sunday came and I sat brooding in my room. I was dying of boredom and instead of sitting there doing nothing, why couldn’t I be productive and knock out the orders?

 I dreaded Sundays. I looked at Saturday as my last day of freedom before the endlessly long hours with nothing to read, nothing to research, and nothing “productive” to do.

But as I stuck with my resolutions, something changed in my heart. I started to look forward to Sunday.

The shift was gradual, but it was there. I spent longer reading my Bible, praying, and reciting Scripture because I wasn’t in a hurry to run off and read a different book. I had time to play games with my siblings after church instead of doing the all-so-important research. I was forced to be more creative – instead of looking up how to make something or fix a problem, I had to figure it out myself or ask someone in my family for help. I wrote more, I created more, I laughed more. I listened to and read some amazing sermons that I would have missed because I was too busy reading more “entertaining” books. I was no longer in a rush to get home from church so I could work on “my things”.

The world was still busy, still going at a breakneck pace, and I still had a million things to get done. But for one day out of seven, it slowed, and I had time to reflect. Time to think back on the week, to make new goals, to repent of the wrongs done, to be thankful for the many gifts, to spend time with my family, to worship with the Body of Christ, to hear God’s word, and to rejoice in the majesty of Jesus.

Sundays should not be just like any other day. It will look different for everyone, but I encourage you to spend some time thinking and praying about how to set Sunday apart. How can we use this time of rest to best worship God and serve the people in our lives? To rest from the chaos, and reflect on God’s glory, to worship?

“Money gained on Sabbath-day is a loss, I dare to say. No blessing can come with that which comes to us, on the devil’s back, by our willful disobedience of God’s law. The loss of health by neglect of rest, and the loss of soul by neglect of hearing the gospel, soon turn all seeming profit into real loss.”
~ C.H. Spurgeon