Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. There is a rhythm to our lives. Man was created at the end of the creation week so that he might begin life enjoying God’s Sabbath rest. That experience was disrupted in the Fall, and for centuries God’s people worked all week in view of the rest that lay before them on the seventh day, at the end of the week. But with the coming of Christ, the covenant was fulfilled, the curse broken, and the day of rest once again became the beginning and not the end of the week for God’s saints.
In one sense, of course, rest still lies before us. Hebrews 3-4 speak about that. There remains an eschatological Sabbath that we have not yet entered into. There is a sense in which even now we look ahead to Sunday, and it drives us forward with hope in our work during the week. But it is important to also see the week the other way around, as Adam began it. Our lives begin with Sabbath, our work flows from Sabbath, we do not work toward Sabbath, we work out of God’s Sabbath of rest and rejoicing.
This is hard for me as a pastor to keep in mind since most of my labor every week is oriented by the coming Sunday. Lessons must be prepared, classes taught, visitation completed, but it is always with an awareness of the looming responsibilities on the Lord’s Day and the many hours of preparation for it. But the joy of that labor is to be found in looking backwards also at the Sabbath that began the week. God met with us, was gracious to us, spoke comfort and peace to us, and commissioned us to go forth and labor. We are not scrambling frantically in order to be ready on-time—okay, that last part isn’t always true, sometimes I am scrambling—we are marching forward steadily as those who know they are at peace with God and safely in his employ and care in all their worldly vocations.
Many people spend their lives never really experiencing work or sabbath as God intended it. They do as little work as they can, just well enough to get by, all the time resenting it and looking forward to when work is over so that they can enjoy the refreshment of… mindlessly scrolling social media, losing brain cells as they are sucked into YouTube, becoming dumber in front of the television but spending most of the time channel surfing, all while malnourishing themselves with fast food, junk food, and too much booze. That’s not how God made us to live, but it is how far too many people live their entire lives.
Let me suggest an alternative: give yourself wholly to the Lord’s Day. Rest, rejoice, and revel in God and his good gifts, preeminently the gift of his Son and the redemption you have in him. Look away from the world and look to Jesus. Spend the day enjoying him and your family, both in the Church and in your household. Then, when Monday comes, climb into the harness and pull, hard, all the way to Saturday. Work as one who knows he serves the Lord Christ and that everything you do is significant, every thing, from filing reports, to splitting logs, to changing the oil, to doing laundry, to preparing a meal without a drive-through, to changing diapers and rocking colicky babies to sleep. You will sleep better at night. You will enjoy each of your meals more. Your days will be far richer and more satisfying when you start with real, godly, substantive sabbath and then live your life as God meant it to be lived: by worshiping God in and through the work he has given you to do each day. --JME
