Christian

I wrote last week about my desire to keep a Christian Sabbath, with the spirit and not the letter of the law.  Specifically I wanted to keep the Old Testament injunction “six days shalt thou labor” instead of my usual “six days shalt thou procrastinate,”  and avoid the deadly “I’ll get up at the crack of dawn on Sunday and get it all done” mentality, which has been the cause of my being late to church many times, stressed, tired, under the gun, and totally without the ability to enjoy a day of rest and spiritual refreshment.  (Just to be clear–this is only about myself and my personal activities.  I’m not going to get all worried about whether or not it’s okay to go out to eat, or to stop at the grocery store because I genuinely forgot to buy something, or even to go to a movie.  All of those activities do cause other people to work, but they’d be doing it anyway . . . so I think I’ll just concentrate on my side of the street, or the paper, or whatever figure of speech you want to use.)

Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). In other words, the concept of a day of rest wasn’t just an arbitrary rule imposed onto t​he Israelites but something for their good, something that served them, not something for them to serve. But, as I discuss in the “Time and Work” chapter of my Intentional Happiness book (see the sidebar), the concept of a day of rest is tricky, because you have to plan ahead to make it happen. I so often find myself under the gun on Sundays, the day set aside by Christians for worship, a new practice instituted because the resurrection of Jesus was on “the first day of the week.”