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Traditionally, there is something special about Sundays. Henry IV was said to have declared:
I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor
that he is unable to have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.
It pictures a scene where people turned their attention away from every-day cares, attended a little more to their own needs and those of their family and did something special. Sadly, "Sunday dinners" around the family table are a tradition we are losing as people take the opportunity to "save the bother of cooking" by visiting the local pizza restaurant.
We all have our memories of that day, the things we did - and didn't
do. The time we had for ourselves that were so scarce the rest of the
busy week. Today Sunday is just like any other day for many and some
rejoice in this while others complain. People old enough to remember
will recall days when everything came to a standstill on Sundays - no
shops, no work, no cinemas, no pubs, no noise. I remember being shushed
on a Sunday "because it's Sunday". Strange when you think that we were
not churchgoers or anything. But the day had that mystique, that air
of reverence about it that made noise a profanity. The problem is that
those Sundays evoke memories of the day as portrayed in the following
from Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater,
It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless: and
a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday
in London.
But of course there were always those who felt that "the Sabbath" was
so sacred that you dare not crack a smile for fear of offending God.
A day for seriousness and sobriety, sanctity and sacrament, when no
one dare lift a poker to stoke the fire ("carry on like that my boy
and you will do plenty of stoking in the hereafter"). Richard Brathwaite
(I have no idea who he was but he lived from 1588-1673) wrote the following
in Barnabee's Journal [1638]:
To Banbury I came, O profane one!
Where I saw a Puritane-one
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday.
Imagine that! Condemning a cat, who was made to hunt mice, for killing a mouse on a Sunday, but being so pious as to stay execution until Monday. Which of these pictures of Sunday did Jesus have in this passage?
In verses 27-28 we read:
Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made
for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of
the Sabbath".
The Sabbath was made for man? Surely this means that the Sabbath serves man and not man the Sabbath? Not just another day like all the rest, nor a dull day, with nothing to do, nor a pious day with rules you dare not break, but a day for man, for our benefit. As we consider the God-given purpose of the Sabbath as a day intended for our restoration, physical and mental (a day of rest), and spiritual (a day for God) maybe old Henry IV was not far off the mark. Maybe we should get some chicken for the pot, do something special with those who are special to us, and turn our attention to higher things in readiness for the busy week ahead - a week of work fortified by a day given by God for us. I hope your week has its roots in a good day - a God day - for your sake.
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