Sabbath wrestling

Because WORLD posts my commentaries on Mondays, there's a good chance you're reading this piece on the day following the Christian Sabbath. So Christian, how did you do yesterday? Did you keep the Sabbath holy?

I've asked myself this question nearly every week for several years. I started feeling concerned about my Lord's Day observance 11 years ago when I was coaching my son's soccer team on Sunday afternoons. I noticed that I would get preoccupied about the games during church. After church, our family would hustle home, hurry through lunch, jump in the van, and dash to the field. I coached, my son played, and the family watched. The entire Wishing clan was caught up in a soccer Sabbath. After the game, I'd be mentally exhausted and would think about lessons to teach the team in the upcoming practice. Even though I was home, my brain couldn't turn off soccer. And it bothered me. My son and I left our hometown league the following season for a league in a nearby town that plays on Saturday.

A few years prior to the Sabbath soccer experience, I was a partner in a golf course and worked seven days a week and didn't think twice about it. Prior to that, while working as a financial consultant for Merrill Lynch, I became a Christian but I went to the office after church to get a jump-start on the week.

My views on the Sabbath have changed over the years, but at times I still struggle in living out the Lord's Day. Weekly, I send my commentary to WORLD on Monday morning. I do my best to get it written by Saturday evening so that I can keep Sunday holy by focusing on worship and rest. But sometimes I slip. And when I do, I wait until sundown on Sunday to start writing. My rationale is that the Jewish Sabbath ran from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday. Am I in the clear waiting until dusk? Some might say that I'm a bit legalistic about the Sabbath, and that may be legitimate criticism. But I can tell you that I have found Sabbath rest to be a blessing. I have experienced the truth of Jesus' statement: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27).

The Fourth Commandment tells us to labor for six days and to keep the Sabbath day holy. The Westminster Shorter Catechism states, "The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy." In our 24/7 culture we Americans struggle with observing the Sabbath. Last month, in an effort to change the political direction of our country, tens of thousands of people gathered for a Tea Party in Washington, D.C., on September 12 . . . a Sunday. And of course, hundreds of thousands of Americans regularly attend NFL games on Sunday afternoons or tune in on television. Better to worship God and rest? Are these "worldly employments and recreations" that we should set aside on Sunday?

So how did you do yesterday? If you're like me, you may have wrestled with that question and felt you came up short.