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I’d like to take your mind on a little journey or two if I may.  Now normally, if you were in my youth group, I’d do like most people to do and ask you to close your eyes (well maybe, provided I knew you wouldn’t fall asleep due to having 5 big glasses of Mt. Dew each of which contained 4 extra sugar packets a piece.)  But since this is written instead of verbal, well, the whole closing your eyes thing might not work so well.  Anyways….

Imagine if you will, that your favorite college football team who at the beginning of the year wasn’t expected to be very good has exceeded everyone’s expectations.  They have won every game they played so far, some with ease; others are nail-biters that they pull out at the very end.  Now, here they are, the last game of the year for their conference, and they are playing the only other team in the conference that also has not lost a game.  Win this game, and you go to the National Championship, to play for the chance to hoist the trophy that will label you as the best football team in the nation.  The stadium is packed, the grills are getting lit left and right for the pregame tailgate, everyone is cheering, playing catch, slapping each other on the back, playing the teams fight song, wearing the team colors and everything else that would go along with the occasion and you have been given free tickets to roam the sidelines and a halftime locker room pass, you just have to be to the field by 7 AM….. 

Or, if you don’t like football lets go for music.  The piano is quite an amazing instrument and you have an opportunity to hear a free concert of a modern day pianist/composer whose skill rivals that of Bach or Beethoven.  You have been selected to hear this concert and have been given front row seats in the Boston Symphony Hall to hear an exclusive, one time only concert of songs that you have chosen exclusively.  There is a slight murmur of anticipation in the Hall as this is the only concert that he will perform of this nature ever and you are the only one who will get to meet with him after the 7 AM concert….

Now, be honest, in either one of these situations (or any other situation that you might think of) do you think that you would ever tell whoever game you the tickets, “thanks, but no thanks”, I would just get more out of these settings if I would be able to just be by myself for it.  Or you would say to me, sorry I can’t, I’m going to be out late the night before seeing a movie with my friends and I just don’t think I will be able to get up on time for it.  I don’t know about you, but I think if it was I who was offering the tickets to you and you gave me that response, my jaw would probably hit the floor.

Now of course I’m sure you are thinking to yourself right now, “Brent, no way I would say no to those opportunities, if I had to be out late the night before, so be it, I just won’t sleep much, but you can count on me being there.”  O.K.  Great, but now let’s say you are presented with another opportunity.  This one involves being able to go to a concert hall type building, give you the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with others as they are really getting into the piano, the drums, the brass, the organ and the guitars.  After that you listen to the 20 to 30 minute motivational/teaching speech about how to improve yourself, how to do better, how to think clearer… (Yes I’m talking about church) and you tell me “thanks, but no thanks, I just can’t worship God with others, I need to do it on my own,” or maybe you tell me “I would, but I was out late the night before and I just don’t think I’d be able to get up in time for it.”

Has anyone other than me wondered no matter how much or little sleep we may get, will have no problem agreeing to go to a big game last minute, but when it comes to an event that happens on the same day at the same time of the week, we continuously just can’t get ourselves out of bed for a church service that probably doesn’t even start till 10 and won’t even take 2 hours of your day?  (I’m not even going to get into night church for now, that might just take way too much time of one more hour)

“You see, God, it’s like this: we could attend church more faithfully if your day came at some other time. You have chosen a day that comes at the end of a hard week, and we’re all tired out. Not only that, but it’s the day following Saturday night, and Saturday night is one time when we feel that we should go out and enjoy ourselves. Often it is after midnight when we reach home, and it is impossible to get up on Sunday morning. We’d like to go to church and know we should; but you have just chosen the wrong day.”  - (author unknown)

Has anyone else ever thought this? 

Now, this is probably not something you would expect to see in a church/religious type of magazine, but I think it is an interesting quote that I recently.  What really is Sunday to us?  What really is Sunday to me?  Sunday is an interesting day.  Sunday is known in the Christian world today as a “day of rest” But what does a day of rest consist of in our life.  Now before I get any farther in this I feel like I first need to make a disclaimer.  This is not meant to be something to day anyone is “Holier than anyone else” but instead it is meant for all of us (myself included) to take a look at just what Sunday is for us. 

O.K. to continue…  So Sunday is a day of rest, I think we would all agree on that right?  So what exactly does our day of rest look like?  Now, we always know when Sunday is going to be, it doesn’t change, it’s always at the same time of the week so we can easily be ready for it.  It always comes the day after Saturday and the Day before Monday.  So what does your Sunday consist of?  Sleeping in?  Going to church twice?  Going to church once and then going golfing?  Going for a long walk?... the possibilities I believe are endless.  But it let me to think, is what we do on Sunday allowing us to rest, or is it allowing us to relax?  Some of you might have just thought right there “Brent, what are you talking about?  What’s the difference between rest and relax?”    To be honest with you, in today’s societal definition of the two, I don’t believe there is a difference, but something I like to do is to look some basic words up and find what the true definition is, well according to Webster anyways.  So here it is:

Relax:  to make less tense, rigid, or firm; make lax: to relax the muscles. To diminish the force of.

Rest:  refreshing ease or inactivity after exertion or labor.  Or a supporting device; support.

Does anyone else notice a difference between the two?  I thought of an interesting way to look at it. Do we hope Sunday is a day of diminished force?  Or do we hope for Sunday to be a day of support?  Now like I said, I’m far from perfect and sometimes something may come up where you just have go somewhere/do something on Sunday.  But is Sunday the only day that we can go golfing?  Is Sunday the only day that you can go to a ball game?  Often we may here, “our child can’t stay out late because they have school in the morning”.  Or “I should probably get going so I can wake up for work in the morning”  When is the last time we heard “I should probably get going to make sure we are able to make it to church on time in the morning”?  The purpose of this is to just get us to think about how we treat Sunday?  Is it really a special day that we set aside to worship God with fellow believers, or for the most part do we just treat it like every other day?  Is going to church twice on Sunday really that bad?  Is going even once a week that hard to do?  Another quote I recently read and I will close with it says  

“Our great-grandfathers called it the holy Sabbath; our grandfathers, the Sabbath; our fathers, Sunday; but today we call it the weekend.

Wow!!, have we ever really thought of it that way?  What do we call it?