Sun Days on Orcas | How to “do” Sundays?

||| SUN DAYS ON ORCAS BY EDEE KULPER |||

Before I read the bible, Sundays were duplicate Saturdays. Fun days. Do-anything days.

Ever since reading the bible, Sunday has become my least favorite day of the week once I get home from church. This is why…

The fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments says the following: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exodus 20:8-11

So the obvious answer is that Sundays aren’t for “doing,” they’re for “being.”

So what do you do when you rest? Do you do nothing? Do you lie down all day? Do you make no plans and not be with people if it requires lots of “doing”?

Here’s where I get all messed up. I don’t spend my other six days doing backbreaking work – no heavy cement-block-making, no long hours of pick-axing, no days spent laying railroad ties with only brute strength. I don’t necessarily yearn for physical rest come Sunday.

My days are spent doing things that are pretty tame – raising children, cooking for them, guiding them, working on writing projects, and failing at gardening. If I were to live a Sabbath day the way I want to, it would mean not cooking, being with friends, and eating out for dinner – all of the things I rarely ever do.

But it’s not about my way. So what is God’s definition of rest?

Does rest mean stillness, or does rest mean doing something other than what you normally do the other days?

If the latter, what if you love what you do for a living? Does it mean you should abstain from your beloved activity? Should chefs not cook? Should writers not write? Should pastors set theology aside? Should athletes be still? Should charity workers chill?

If so, what should they do once they’ve put aside what they normally do? Sit down and read the newspaper?

What about people who hate their jobs? Would it mean that all of the people who can’t stand sitting at their desks all day get to “rest” by finally being active, since sitting all Sunday would be frustratingly still again?

Rest is so relative to each person and their daily patterns; is God’s definition of rest subjective depending on the person, or the same for everyone?

I tend to get legalistic on Sundays, if I don’t watch out. No computer use on Sunday – it’s everything but being present. No shopping for groceries on Sunday – that’s making the “foreigner” in town work for my sake. No anything, come to think of it – because there’s always something questionable about anything. Then my whole family starts to hate Sunday. I do too.

Aside from going to church and experiencing community with others (which I truly love), I don’t yet have any good conception of how to “be” on Sundays, so my kids don’t yet have an example for their future adult lives. Sometimes they just see me wander around aimlessly, trying not to “do” much of anything, and hope for something spontaneous to give us all rest.

Ironically, the way churches function these days, Sundays mean everything but rest for many church-goers – pastors are on, music leaders are on, instrumentalists are on, children’s class teachers are on, and people setting up and cleaning up food afterward are on.

If church meant people meeting on a grassy hill, sitting on blankets in the shade with picnic baskets, and sharing all of the things they learned through the week from studying the bible and applying it to daily life, we’d have no need for people preparing and working on Sundays. We would all be each other’s teachers, and we’d be in wonderful community with each other.

The one thing I have realized about all of this sabbath stuff is that Saturday may be the secret Sabbath day. It dawned on me about a year ago because Saturday is when my whole family is happily at rest, at peace, and wallowing in every present moment.

Then we force more sabbathing on Sunday, the day we go to church. God never commanded two days of rest. Hmmm.