I wake up on a Sun­day mor­ning to sounds from the neigh­bo­ring yards. On one yard the hou­se ow­ner is cut­ting fi­re­wood with a cir­cu­lar saw, on anot­her I can hear a lawn­mo­wer and a trim­mer. This ma­kes me won­der how dif­fe­rent­ly pe­op­le feel about spen­ding Sun­da­ys. Many of them post­po­ne so many week­ly cho­res till Sun­day that they need the whole day to do them.

Our way of life to­day is dif­fe­rent from that in my child­hood and even more dif­fe­rent com­pa­red to the time when my pa­rents were yo­ung. When I was lit­t­le, we just did the ne­ces­sa­ry cho­res on Sun­da­ys. On­ly a few of our neigh­bors oc­ca­si­o­nal­ly spent a Sun­day ha­y­ma­king, chop­ping fi­re­wood or col­lec­ting mush­rooms or wild ber­ries.

I still re­mem­ber the lo­ve­ly frag­ran­ce of the Sun­day bre­ak­fast coo­ked by my mot­her: rice pud­ding and blu­e­ber­ry soup. They tas­ted so good, al­most fes­ti­ve. Sun­day mor­nings al­so see­med spe­ci­al be­cau­se my fat­her al­wa­ys switc­hed on the ra­dio for the Sun­day ser­vi­ce.

Even no­wa­da­ys many pe­op­le feel that Sun­day mor­ning is dif­fe­rent from re­gu­lar week­day mor­nings. They en­joy the rest­ful ho­li­day at­mosp­he­re of the day.

In many li­nes of work Sun­da­ys are ne­ces­sa­ri­ly and una­voi­dab­ly work days. But des­pi­te the inc­re­a­sing­ly work­day qu­a­li­ty of our Sun­da­ys, mo­dern pe­op­le should give some se­ri­ous thought to the qu­es­ti­on of the abo­ve he­a­ding. The im­por­tant thing is how we res­pond to that qu­es­ti­on, and what things we find most im­por­tant deep in our he­arts. Are mun­da­ne ac­ti­vi­ties more im­por­tant to us than he­art­felt faith and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rest af­ter a busy week?

God in His great wis­dom gave us both work and rest. The body and mind of eve­ry hu­man being re­qui­re re­co­ve­ry and res­to­ra­ti­on of strength bet­ween pe­ri­ods of ac­ti­vi­ty. Kee­ping the Sab­bath holy me­ans that we can put our dai­ly du­ties asi­de, en­joy the rest and ref­resh our souls by lis­te­ning to God’s word. ”Come to me, all you who are we­a­ry and bur­de­ned, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28.)

Af­ter cre­a­ting the world, God res­ted on the se­venth day and sanc­ti­fied that day for rest (Ex. 20:11). Sun­day rest is al­so a sym­bol of the eter­nal rest that we will en­joy af­ter our tem­po­ral en­de­a­vor on earth.

I che­rish my child­hood me­mo­ries of

warm blu­e­ber­ry soup

and white rice pud­ding.

I think about them

when clouds float down on the branc­hes

and sounds are muf­f­led

by gus­hing rain.

Text: Vau­la Es­ke­li

Trans­la­ti­on: Sirk­ka-Lii­sa Lei­no­nen

You will find the ori­gi­nal blog post here.