The Lord's Day

    In our calendar, our days of the week have drawn on some creative sources (planets and deities) for their interesting names: Hellenistic astrology for Sun Day and Moon Day; Norse gods Tiw, Odin, Thor and Frigg; ending with the Roman god Saturnus.

    So with these sources, where does the Lord’s Day come in?

    In scripture, the day dedicated to the Lord was a day dedicated to worship; this was how the weeks began – first pray, then work. The Early Church Fathers were clear that the Sabbath, the day of rest, was to be a distinct day from the day of worship – and so the week ended with rest.

    Pray, work, rest.

    As our society morphed this pattern over the centuries into the calendar, the industrial revolution combined rest and worship days into Sunday.

    In living memory we saw the politicisation of the Lord’s Day – even having the legal “Lord’s Day Act” from 1906 until 1985, which forbade Sunday shopping, horseracing, concerts, and movie-going. (Some extreme folks even forbade tobogganing on Sundays!) Yet even in those times, some acts of commerce still took place, as people needed food and fuel, for example, for necessity. Medical and police professionals still worked. Farmers still farmed. …

    And in today’s globalised society, the concept of having a day entirely off may seem unattainable.

    Yet: we are not required to change the whole of society, but we are able to change our own lives. We can choose to include a Lord’s Day in our calendars, and it does not need to be restricted to Sundays.

    We have the option to make every day, in fact, a Lord’s Day: when we bring the Lord into our days. When we consider the presence of the divine in our business meetings, and shopping trips, and recreational activities. When we engage in prayer, and work, and rest, as a regular rhythm that guides and directs us.

    So let’s re-instate the Lord’s Day in our hearts. Let’s renew our commitment to the rhythm of God in every aspect of our lives. Let’s remember, every morning, that “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!”