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Discipleship, confessional renewal, church planting: these are all components of the renewal God is leading the CRC to pursue. But I wonder whether we are missing a surprisingly simple component: well-spent, weekly Lord’s Days.
Tuesdays with Morrie & Sundays with the LORD
Consider this modern-day parable from the book Tuesdays with Morrie (a true story).
Mitch was a non-stop action kind of guy—a sports reporter jetting around the country. His relationship with his wife was heading into dangerous territory, and his zeal for life beyond his job was almost gone.
Then late one night watching TV, Mitch saw his favorite college professor on a talk show. Professor Morrie was speaking about his battle with ALS and about dying. Mitch had promised to stay in touch with Morrie, but hadn’t. So now, 10 years later, Mitch managed to squeeze in a short half-hour visit. Mitch committed to visiting weekly. Soon, Mitch cleared a whole day—Tuesdays with Morrie. They spoke of the mysteries of life. Sometimes they were just silent. Tuesdays became the best kind of holiday for Mitch. The gift of tuesdays with Morrie changed Mitch’s life, rescuing it from shipwreck.
What would you say if I gave you seven weeks of vacation every year? Seven whole weeks of those kinds of days that Mitch spent with Morrie? Not Tuesdays with Morrie, but Sundays with the Lord.
The Park and the Fences
The Lord gives us six days of regular work and leisure, and one day for returning to him in rest, worship, fellowship, and mercy. But many of us changed our view of Sundays and have lost God’s rhythm.
Our denomination in the past struggled with the error of legalism on Lord’s Days. Most of us heard stories of miserable Sunday rules (wearing Sunday clothes the whole day), or rules against forbidden relaxations (swimming or biking). We might not have had the Jewish rabbi’s 39 categories of forbidden work with 1,500 rules and regulations. But like the Pharisees, we lost sight of what the day was actually for.
Joseph Pipa, in his book The Lord’s Day, memorably illustrates this dynamic: God made a beautiful park in the center of his creation, called the Sabbath, designed for us to enter and enjoy time with God. But Pharisaical keepers of the park said, “We’ve got to be careful to keep this park; let’s put up fences of rules.” Soon, people knew and observed the fence rules, but few entered the park. The park became a museum.
I remember my dad noticing something strange as we drove home from church one Sunday. Amid the hubbub of six kids in the back of our baby blue Pontiac Laurentian station wagon, Dad spotted a man pushing a burgundy lawn mower down the street—on a Sunday! In the 1970s though not many neighbors went to church, none of them disturbed each other by mowing their lawn. It was Sunday, after all—the day of rest, of pause. As we pulled up the driveway, Dad noticed the shed door ajar. Then it hit him: the man was pushing away our stolen burgundy lawnmower.
Today, what strikes us as odd is not a lawnmower on a Sunday, but how hard it is to even detect the countless ways shopping, working, and our weekday leisures are eroding our experience of the Lord’s day.
Whether the greater temptation is a legalistic Sabbath or a reaction against it in the form of a self-indulgent Sunday, the result is the same: we miss God’s purpose to begin our weeks in the goodness of rest, in worship, in communion with God and his people. Like the exhausted and satiated culture around us, our Sundays become just another day. Sunday is the tail end of our weekend, a day we fill with the work and leisure we couldn’t pack into the other six. If convenient, we squeeze in a Lord’s hour for worship.
Sundays with the Lord is God’s Creational & Redemptive Design
But the one-in-seven day of rest was given to all humanity as God’s design before sin entered the world. God rested from his creating work. Likewise we are called not only to cease and rest from our regular occupations, but like God, we are to make it a set-apart and special day. We are to make it holy (Ex 20:11).
Later, God added another reason for keeping the Sabbath, a redemptive one. Israel was to use that day to remember that they were enslaved. The Sabbath was a weekly celebration of God’s redemption from Egypt (Deut. 5:15).
Each Lord’s Day, we remember and celebrate our deliverance: Jesus dying as our Passover lamb to redeem us from slavery to Satan and sin. We participate in the risen Jesus now leading us on this new Exodus to the Promised Land of his kingdom.
The one-in-seven rest day was a covenant sign for God’s people (Ex. 31:13). It became a miniature of the rest, delight, and communion of God’s eternal Sabbath when the Messiah comes. Christ’s work in us through his Spirit “begins already in this life the eternal Sabbath” (Heidelberg Q&A 103).
Hebrews 4 describes how Christ is our rest, and how he gives eternal rest. But both Q&A 103 and Hebrews 4:8-10 state that until we reach that eternal rest, there remains another rest-keeping, a Sabbath-keeping rest for the people of God. The weekly one-in-seven Sabbath remains. On this God-made festive day of rest, we ‘sabbath,’ we cease; we set the day apart and “keep it holy” for God to work in us in a special way.
What to Do on the Lord’s Day?
Jesus’ example and gospel teaching (Mark 2-3) show that Sabbath is for gathering in worship to hear God’s Word, for prayer, for self-care and reflection, for acts of mercy and healing for the needy.
What if I could snap my fingers and completely clear the next 52 Sundays for you? Would you meet with God and his people? To hear his Word? Haven’t you ever wished for more time to catch up on Bible or Christian living reading? To go for a stroll, delighting in God’s creation? Have you written a prayer or tried praying for more than a few minutes? Do you not long for time to delight in feasting, resting, conversing with family or friends. Or longed for deeper friendships with those at church, but never had time to invite someone over or go deeper than skimming the surface? Have you ever wanted to visit someone shut in or hospitalized, but never could find a convenient time?
Don’t you long for a day to get out of that rat race, like Mitch with Morrie, to spend time in communion with God and with his people?
Sanctify The Day
A Lord’s Day rest was easier when the whole family, the whole church, the whole city actually took a break. I remember stores closed on Sundays. I remember peeling potatoes while watching Saturday-morning cartoons, so everything was ready for a restful Sunday. I remember early morning family bike rides before Sunday worship.
I also remember delivering our small city paper, with the headline: “Lord’s Day Act Repealed in Province of Ontario.” Decades later, as a pastor with a young family, figuring out with other young families how much of the hustle and bustle of kids’ birthday parties should spill into Lord’s Day routines. Now, with kids grown, I sense the culture and church culture have changed even more, making Sunday just a regular day with some church added in.
What a struggle not to lose our Lord’s days to our regular work and leisure. But what a gift of renewal when we experience what the Lord’s day is for.
The Lord’s Day is a gift, a day to be sanctified for God’s work in us, not profaned (made regular) by self-absorption. When God’s people profaned the day, exile resulted (Ez. 20:12-14). When God’s people kept this day, God sanctified them and inhabited them (2 Chr. 29). The Lord’s Day is not the last half of our weekend. It’s the first and best day of our new week. What you do with it defines your week and where you are heading.
After all the upheaval of our last synods, Synod 2026 adopted an overture that focuses on restoring our worship. Amid all the recent plans and decisions of the CRCNA, perhaps it is this recovery of worship within the context of well-kept Lord’s Days that holds the greatest promise for our delight and our renewal!
About the Author
Harry Frielink serves as pastor of Covenant CRC in Barrie, Ont. He earned his D.Min. from Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, writing Covenantal Communion with God and Each Other.