In 1963 in Greenville, South Carolina the Fox Theater opened on a Sunday. On a Sunday! Scandalous, right?! For some the world was unraveling. Much of what they cared about was quickly being taken over by people who would rather go to the movies or buy alcohol or have their children in soccer games than take time for "sabbathing."
In their book, Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon talk about how they saw the world changing when the Fox Theater defied the Blue Laws and opened on a Sunday evening. To the authors, it felt like freedom to go see a John Wayne moving picture. To many others, it felt like their values were lost in a movement they couldn't control...a movement away from something they considered "sacred."
We might snicker at Blue Laws. I wonder, though, if the reason that they went out of fashion was because they lost their meaning. Long before they were pushed back on and theaters openly resisted, the reason they existed was forgotten.
I am not advocating for a resurgence of Blue Laws (though some, surprisingly, are), but a resurgence of remembering the meaning behind them.
The purpose was to give people a chance to rest from their work. Now we have to compete with a day of rest. Now there’s no day on the calendar that is set aside to recover. We have to work to rest. Spend energy. Reshape our calendars...and our thinking.
With so many options to keep us busy and working and occupied is there room for rest? Is there room for Sabbath? The people sitting around with at the table with Jesus on the Sabbath had missed the point. Their hearts had loved the law itself rather than the meaning behind it.
Can we actually rest from our work so we can rest in our work? In that, is it possible to radiate Jesus' rest so that we can love the restless people around in a way that they would enter into Jesus rest along with us?
You are not what you produce. You are who the Father says you are. And, if you are in Christ, you are his beloved child.