When I was a kid, Sunday was a day for church and relaxing. I had never heard of youth sports on Sunday morning or an NFL game starting at 10:00 a.m. There was definitely no weekly wrap-up of the “news” on TV or any talking heads blabbering on about the sorry state of affairs we were in. To my mind, this may partly explain why everyone is so uptight and why we’re at each other’s throats right now. We just don’t take a break from things. We need to defragment our hard drives (anyone remember having to do that?) so that our brains can function better during the week.
Unfortunately, nowadays, Sunday is just another day to cram more doing into our lives. Like the Home Depot says, “More saving, more doing.” Only there’s less saving. Just more doing.
But there are good reasons for taking the day off and just breathing, and it’s not just for Christians. America has a long tradition of relaxing on Sundays, for example, in 1909, the Washington Legislature passed the “Sabbath Breaking” law (Chapter 249, Section 242, Laws of 1909), which prohibited most businesses from operating on Sunday. The law was commonly called the “Blue Law,” and was a very broad expansion of an 1881 law that only prohibited “fighting or offering to fight, horse-racing or dancing” on Sunday. Religious motivations played a major role in its adoption. However, people also viewed it as being “progressive” legislation that prohibited most employers from requiring their employees to work seven days a week, in an era before workers had the protection of state labor regulations and labor union collective bargaining agreements. https://www.historylink.org/File/9057
So many people are saying “I can’t breath!” Well, tomorrow take a breather. Relax. Go to church if you are a believer. If you can’t go then try spending some time with family or making a phone call to someone you haven’t talked to in a long time. Enjoy a relaxing holiday to start the week off right.
But if you listen to me, says the Lord, and bring in no burden by the gates of the city on the sabbath day, but keep the sabbath day holy and do no work on it, then there shall enter by the gates of the city kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and this city shall be inhabited forever.
Jerimiah 17: 24-26
RL Martin 