Day Off

I remember hearing the line and the song, of course, “Everybody is working for the weekend.”  The line only becomes a greater truth as we grow older.  We work to get those days off.  We do that all year to arrive at the place where we can acquire vacation time.  But we also do that every week as we work to get to Saturday. Saturdays change as kids grow older.  There are days full of sports and other activities.  We trade work for activities.  But no doubt we appreciate the break; a pause that is well deserved and much needed.  Even in retirement, Saturdays bring more freedom, and allow more people to be able to do things.  What does God want from Saturday?

We so quickly jump to this old time word of the Sabbath meaning rest/worship to be Sunday.  Yet so long ago these were full days, which often became more Saturday-type days.  When I was at the Storyline conference in February, I began to develop this concept.  I was asking myself tough questions like What does God want from me on Saturday?  No doubt my Saturdays have changed from my single days of sleeping in.  My Saturdays include making pancakes, waking up early, and playing with my kids.  While I am fulfilling my vocation and my role as a parent, I sometimes still pine for the days when I used to sleep in.  And so often I am trying to make it to noon for a 20 minute snooze that will refresh me before I head to the night’s planned activities and then back to my biggest work day--Sunday.  As I pondered my own story, I wanted to be intentional about days off.  I know one of the things I learned at the conference was that an excess of down time and unintentional living leads to boredom and non-fulfillment.  I know God has to want something from me on Saturday.  So what does my Saturday Story look like?

Over the next several weeks we will talk about your Saturday Story.  What I don’t want is for you to think we are going to spend the next several weeks telling you to stop doing your normal activities, and substitute them with only reading the Bible.  We know Read 1 is a part of our discipleship model, and is important in our Christian walk; but hopefully you know that it is by living your story that you impact the lives of others.  You share the love of Christ by being intentional in your living, and by looking for opportunities to share God’s Word.  We begin this series with Day Off and talk about the good aspects as well as the struggles with off days.  Days off happen not only in the summer, but every week, and so while the summer is beginning to draw to a close, we have plenty of days off that happen.  After we take an honest look at Day Off, we can begin to really open up our world and ask God to guide and direct our Saturday stories.  The goal is that this is a topic and day we rarely talk about in church, so this may help us be God’s extraordinary servants every day of the week.  You never know--you may come up with some cool ideas that develop into a Saturday Story you can’t wait to tell others.