My knuckles strangled the steering wheel as I hurtled toward Safeway on a Sunday afternoon. I didn’t have the ingredients to make dinner, and I was resentful of being in the kitchen since I’d already made breakfast and lunch for my family.

And that was after several hours of wrangling two energetic young boys, scrambling to get us primped and polished for church, then coats and shoes and seatbelts and car seats and parking lots and “hold my hand” and signing in and dropping off and…you get it. The storms of trouble, they were a-brewing.

Before I flounced out of the house I griped at my parents and husband, “Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t I have a break?” My family braced for Hurricane Janet and let me blow out of the house.

With tears in my eyes, I asked God those same two questions that I had spat at my family a few minutes before. And a still-small voice in my spirit said, “Because you didn’t plan ahead for my day.” The whirling winds in my mind calmed. The clouds parted company and slowly a smile broke across my face. When I got home, I apologized to my parents and explained to them my renewed commitment to prepare for Sunday rest every week. Since that day, I’ve welcomed the Lord’s Day as a time of rejuvenation and delighted in nurturing (spoiling) my family with food and large side of peace and quiet.

Do your Sundays look like this? For many women, Sunday is just another work-at-home day.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can break the cycle.

 

Before I get started, let’s address one question: does it matter to God what day we celebrate the Sabbath? God established the Sabbath on the seventh day. In the Hebrew world, that day is Saturday. Jews, then and now, observe Sabbath from sunset on Friday evening to sunset on Saturday. After the resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the week (Sunday in the Jewish calendar), Christians began to meet on Sunday and called it the Lord’s Day. I use the terms Sabbath, Sunday, and the Lord’s Day interchangeably, but Sabbath truly refers to the traditional seventh day observed by Jews since the time of Moses. I personally don’t think God cares which day we celebrate and take rest – as long as we do it! But if your conscience is convicted to take your Sabbath on a day other than Sunday, then switch to your preferred day.

Two of my favorite things about Sunday rest

1. Time to reconnect with family and friends without performance anxiety.

I’m about to reveal a shocking truth. Brace yourself: It’s not your job to entertain your kids. Or your spouse. (If you need a minute to recover, I understand.)

Yes, the weekend is for fun, relaxation, and family time but you don’t have to be a professional event planner to pull it off. Instead, keep Sunday “fun day” low key. And make sure your family knows it.

This can be hard at first, especially if your kids are used to you planning most of the fun in the home. It might even be hard for you to accept.

If you grew up in a household where your parents rarely played with you or took you to interesting places, you may feel an extra burden to give your children the experiences you never had.

Or perhaps you had a wonderfully rich childhood and you want to give your kids the same thing.

So you fill your weekends with fun activities, travel, adventures…and exhaustion.

If you want to stroll through the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History with 25 kids (or maybe just your two), or transform your backyard into a paintball battle field and go to war with your husband and children, then go for it!

But try to reserve high energy entertainments for the first six days of the week, and dial down the activity on Sunday.

Here’s another secret: It’s okay to let your children experience boredom – it’s like jet fuel for creativity. When you’re on the couch, feet propped up, book in hand and your child delivers the dreaded words “Mom, I’m bored” – wait ‘em out. Chances are, your child will find a way to occupy himself soon.

When you first start taking your Sunday rest seriously, let your kids know that entertainment will be of the quiet kind on this special day. Emphasize rest and family time.

Here are a few ideas:

• Family board games
• Hot chocolate (or lemonade) and conversations on the couch
• Consider relaxing screen time rules on Sunday and allow extra time for movies and video games
• Let your kids bring one friend over for a few hours but encourage quiet activities (your child needs rest, too)
• Family movie night
• Read a book in front of a crackling fire (in winter) or on a hammock under a tree (in warm weather)
• Chat on the phone with a loved one
• Invite a friend over for coffee
• Bring over several friends or family to fellowship with you at Sunday dinner (it may seem counterintuitive to a quiet Sunday, but the food is already prepared and you’ll have all the time you need to spend with your guests.)
• Dig into a new Bible study you’re excited about
• Work on a craft (it’s probably best to avoid projects requiring power tools)
• Naps (yay!)
• Tell stories, or read them aloud or listen to an audio book
• Play cards
• Put music on the stereo (or find a music station on tv) and enjoy a concert
• Survey your kids and spouse for calm activities they would like to try

What to do if you have very young children at home.

If you have very young children (like me), your little ones will probably hang out within a one-foot radius of your ankles.

So how can you and your darlings take it easy when their attention is focused on their favorite person (that would be you)? This is a chance to bring out a special toy or activity that your child is only allowed to play with on Sunday (idea from Karen Ehman’s book A Life That Says Welcome). This toy’s scarcity during the week may make it a valuable and absorbing activity for your children when you need a break. You can also switch “primary entertainer” roles with a spouse or willing family member so that everyone gets uninterrupted “loafing” time. Another idea: create a toddler (or preschool or whatever age) “busy bag”. Here are a few ideas from Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/518406607092626961/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/29273466312073141/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AQPWjw5U6FjqAtAm-DdVW-zFLTw6UwAIIV0srgvLX2028RMvr7xzCOo/

Once you shake off the belief that it’s your personal responsibility to make sure your child is having fun, you’ll find Sunday rest time to be incredibly freeing. When I started letting my boys find their own fun, I was worried they would go wild and bounce off the walls with boredom. It didn’t happen. When they were bored, they found something to do. Amazing, right? Their little worlds didn’t end just because I took a day off from being ringmaster of our family circus.

And your kids won’t fall apart, either.

And the restful atmosphere seems to induce calmness in my rambunctious renegades; in fact, it’s the one day a week when my older son takes a nap.

2. Your day of rest should be written in stone.

Many women complain of exhaustion and a relentless pace of life full of obligations. Hours and days and weeks in an endless cycle of making everything run smoothly, holding the household together for the people you love. Maybe you feel a bit like a hamster on a wheel.

But what if you could count on stopping the wheel for one day every week, no matter what?

For the Hebrews, honoring God by resting on the Sabbath was tied to their very identity: if they worked on the Sabbath, they were cut off from Israel. It was that serious.

And Jews – from kings to day laborers – managed to find a way to drop their workload and rest every seventh day.

Now I’m not saying that your salvation depends on observing a day of rest, but your sanity might be!

In my next post on Sunday Sanity Savers, I’ll give you details about how to arrange your schedule – including laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking – so that all work is finished by Saturday night and your Sunday is free to enjoy.

Decide – right now – that you and your family will set apart (the Bible sometimes uses the word “sanctify”) the Lord’s Day. Write it on your calendar and on your heart. Get your spouse and children on board, if your children are old enough to understand.

Now you have a day that you can expect rest, rejuvenation, and reconnection. Don’t be surprised if it becomes everyone’s favorite day of the week!

What Sabbath/Sunday rest IS:

Resting on the seventh day is a gift from God to you.

Mark 2:27 Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. (The word “made” literally means “for the sake of” according to the Greek translation.) This was remarkable considering that most ancient people worked every day with no concept of a rightful rest. God’s law meant that even cruel slave owners were obligated by His law to allow servants to rest. You won’t find this level of compassion for the poor in other ancient cultures, signifying the uniqueness of our God.

It is a weekly reminder of God’s presence and provision.

Exodus 20:8-11 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

The Sabbath is for you, but it’s about God. God created the Sabbath so we could share His joy at creation and remember to be grateful for all He has blessed us with. A restful day after a crazy week gives us a chance to “be still and know that I am God.” If we don’t slow down and join God to marvel at His goodness, we’ll never really know Him as He wants to be known.

It puts a stop to an endless cycle of work.

Let’s be honest, if we weren’t forced to stop for one day a week, we would find a way to fill up every day with junk. Life would be all work and no play. And God doesn’t want that for you! If your life is so full that you don’t think you can take one day off, then you need to sit down (with your spouse, if you have one) and prayerfully reconsider your priorities.

For example:

• Trim out unnecessary activities (skip the line at Starbucks, make your own coffee, and use those extra minutes to wipe down your bathroom; not fun, but still important.)
• Delegate anything that doesn’t have to be done by you (even young children can help set the table on Saturday night so it’s ready for Sunday dinner.) If finances allow it, you can hire out tasks like lawn care or oil changes or splurge on a house cleaning service.
• Shuffle around your schedule so that you can accomplish your obligations within six days. For example, if you have trouble using Saturday to prepare food for Sunday because Saturday is usually laundry day, then do laundry each weekday morning. Yes, you read that correctly. When you get up in the morning, throw a small load of laundry in the machine. Stuff it in the dryer when you get home from work (or whenever, if you work from home or stay home with your kids) and have a folding party in front of the tv after dinner. Recruit help from your spouse and children who are old enough to help. (I got this idea from Love the Home You Have by Melissa Michaels.)
• Learn to say “no” to excessive requests (even fun invitations, like dining out with friends, if you need the time to prepare for Sunday – just invite those same friends over for a leisurely Sunday dinner.)
• Declutter your home so you have less “stuff” to take care of. Clutter causes stress and discontentment; it’s just hard to relax in your home when your eyes keep settling on junk mail, random toy parts, dusty tchotchkes and scattered laundry. Clear out a few things to make room for more time. You can find many articles and books on home organization and decluttering to help you get started.

It is joyful.

As a kid, I didn’t like Sundays because church was boring. There, I said it. And it was also the day before the start of the school week. As adults, it can mean the start of the work week when clothes need to be ironed, lunches made, calendars reviewed, and bye byes said to the weekend. But the Jews didn’t (and still don’t) see it this way. (Of course they celebrate Shabbat from Friday evening to Saturday evening, but you know what I mean.) This is what King David, a man after God’s own heart, wrote about the Sabbath:

Psalm 92:1 A Psalm, a Song for the Sabbath day.

It is good to give thanks to the LORD

And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High

To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning

And Your faithfulness by night

Jews don’t just observe the Sabbath, they celebrate it. They enjoy fellowship during their evening meal, take pleasure in rest, contemplate the goodness of God, and attend services at their synagogue. Observant Jews are sad to see the end of the Sabbath each week.

People who do not observe Shabbat think of it as a day filled with stifling restrictions, or as a day of prayer like the Christian Sabbath. But to those who observe Shabbat, it is a precious gift from G-d, a day of great joy eagerly awaited throughout the week, a time when we can set aside all of our weekday concerns and devote ourselves to higher pursuits. Tracey R. Rich, Judaism 101 http://www.jewfaq.org/shabbat.htm

What would our week be like if we took joy in the Lord’s Day? What would it feel like to rejoice on Sunday and be sorry that the day has ended – and not because the next day is Monday and it’s back to the grind?

It is holy. I believe the average Christian in America has lost reverence for the Lord’s Day. Oh, we go to church, but then we kinda do what we want with the rest of our day. If we’ve got the cooking and cleaning reasonably tamed, then we’ll give ourselves a break and rest. But if the lawn needs mowing or the laundry is in a stinky heap and begging for attention, we kick off the Lord’s Day and get the work done. When God told us to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy, He didn’t mean that my lawn should stay overgrown until next week, did He?

God told His people to observe the Sabbath for two reasons:

• In six days God created all things, and then He rested on the seventh day. We reflect and remember the awesome creative power and goodness of God.
• God brought His people out of slavery to freedom. We are to remember what He has done: He has made us free. And once in seven days we are to celebrate the freedom He has given us.

Tracey R. Rich (Judaism 101) puts it like this:

Thus, by resting on Shabbat, we are reminded that we are free. But in a more general sense, Shabbat frees us from our weekday concerns, from our deadlines and schedules and commitments. During the week, we are slaves to our jobs, to our creditors, to our need to provide for ourselves; on Shabbat, we are freed from these concerns, much as our ancestors were freed from slavery in Egypt.

Exodus 20: 10-11 (NASB) …but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. (Emphasis mine)

Deuteronomy 5:15 (NASB) You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.

For Jews, the penalty of working on the Sabbath wasn’t being a little extra tired the next day – it was execution. God was letting everyone know how serious – and how holy – this commandment was.

Now I’m not advocating public executions for washing your car on Sunday. But I encourage you to look at Sabbath from God’s perspective: it is a day about Him and for us. It is set apart, holy, special, and joyous. Let us be the same.

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. A double-decker chocolate cake is hiding in the craft closet and a casserole awaits its debut in the refrigerator. And the fresh, soft yeast dinner rolls are making it tough to wait until lunch time tomorrow when we’ll sit down to our little feast and talk and share stories around the table (the hope of telling stories might be a bit fanciful on my part). With the help of my family (and husband!) the kitchen is shining and the floors are vacuumed. I’ve got four home décor magazines and three Christian living books calling me to the couch with a cup of tea.

I can’t wait.

And if you begin to look at sabbath from God’s perspective, you’ll soon find yourself glowing with anticipation as Sunday draws near.