I love the feel of accomplishment on Saturday evening when I go to bed with my body aching in places I didn’t know I had from all the extra Saturday work – purging the fridge, putting away the dishes that have been stored in the dishwasher for the last few days and seeing them back in their place waiting for next week’s leftovers. I love the feel of all the laundry being washed, dried, and put away and flipping the light switch down after the final mopping of the floor.
The house anticipating our day of rest brings me a refreshing even before we’ve rested.
I love the rest a Sunday brings.
There was once a different side of this. Sunday used to be the busiest day of the week. We used to get up on Sunday morning and cook a big batch of French toast and sausage, slather it with peanut butter and sit around the table for a half hour laughing and talking. Then we’d get up and clean up the mess. The kids hated that part, “Boys dishes, girls clean off table!” or vice versa. But they did it and did it well. If we had gotten up early enough we might have time to go for a walk, but not usually. Once breakfast was cleared, we began the journey of getting ready for church. If you have ever gotten ready for church in a house with four children, two of them teenage boys, two of them pre-teen girls, with one bathroom, then you deserve a metal. We have done it and let me tell you, by the time we all make it to the car, we’re recovering from multiple conflicts, struggling to fuel our spirits with the joy Sunday should be bringing, and trying to keep our feet on Satan’s neck who specializes in ushering in conflict on any given day, but especially Sunday morning (and Wednesday night).
Sunday afternoon we did it again. Oh there were those wonderful Sundays where I had put a pot roast on early and all I had to do was make bread and set the roast on the table when we got home. But still, there was the cleanup. Everybody helped but still everybody dreaded it.
Then it was rush, rush, rush back to church without time for even a little Sunday nap. It seemed that all the joy a Sunday brought came and went, sifting in an out of our kitchen in spurts, deceiving us all into thinking that this way of the American Sunday in the south was worth all the effort. “Maybe I’m just not doing it right,” I mused. After all, we did not have any Sunday even comparable to this in my childhood, so I had taken what I had seen other women of the church do and decided that was just what everybody did.
Always questioning, teetering on the edge of condemnation – which I wasn’t supposed to have if I was walking with Christ, right?
The perpetual question mark of self-doubt hung over my head.
I can’t remember the moment when I saw the light. There was no defining moment of transformation, nor was there a family discussion. We just stopped the madness. Maybe it began the first time I prepared a French toast casserole on a Saturday evening and simply popped it in the oven that Sunday morning, and fell in love with the simplicity it brought into my spirit. We began having cinnamon toast, muffins, cereal, or oatmeal for breakfast. We left the dishes in the sink. We had chicken salad for lunch, and loaded the dishwasher. All of a sudden, we had time to take a more leisurely walk, play a family game of softball, or simply linger in the house with a second pot of coffee or a second glass of tea.
And when we left for church, we were a much more loving group with fertile fields for the Word of the Lord to fall upon – the soil of our fallow ground broken up and rich with contentment.
This is the Sabbath.
In it, may you find your joy and rest.
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