It Is Sunday Evening And A Great Day Of Rest

Hello all, it is Sunday evening and the day was great as usual. Family up early and cleaned and polished for church. It's a great feeling to gather in the Lord's house to worship and to fellowship. I enjoy the time I can spend with friends that I might not of seen since last Sunday. I can't help thinking back to the old day when every thing centered around the church on Sundays.

If you go back to the time of the Puritans their services were a tad different than ours today. They would arrive as a family and go to their family box pew. In some cases these pews were in the family for generations. They would come ready to hear God's word and any preacher that was not good for two turns of the hour glass was not one that would keep his job. They so delighted in the hearing of the word that they would sit for two hour sermons. On a table in the front was an hour glass. After one hour the tithing man would go to the front and turn the glass and the preacher would preach for another hour. Then after that they would go and eat their lunches that they had brought a long, then back in for another service. Speaking of the tithing man he also had a long pole he would use to take collections. He would have a basket or something similar hanging on the end to move down the pews for people to put their tithe in. But on the other end of the pole was a brass knob or pin, on one side and a feather on the other. This was to help people to stay awake in church. For a man he would get either the brass know as bob on the head or the pin would give a grievous prick. For the women they would get the tickling of the feather. But the tithing man took his job very seriously, and his position was one that was looked up to.

In our not so distant past Sundays was a day you didn't find many stores open, in fact when I was young there might be one gas station open on Sunday. If you needed things for Sunday you made sure you did your shopping on Saturday.

I remember my father-in-law telling when he was a kid back in the thirties they lived in South Dakota. On Sundays they didn't do much work, instead it was visiting day. they lived on a ranch/farm. And to get to there nearest neighbor they had to travel many miles by horse no less. They would reach their destination and were always welcomed and they would eat together and visit till it was time to head home. He said, if the people you went to visit were gone, maybe visiting someone else, you didn't just turn around and head home. He said, you went right on in, because the doors were not locked. They would cook and eat their meal there, leaving the dirty dishes on the table. That told the owners when they got home that someone had come to call while they were gone. He said, when you got home you might find dirty dishes on your table letting you know that you had visitors while you were gone.

I am sure you can think back to a slower time, a time when things seemed to make more sense. A time when black was black and white was white no shades of gray of almost black or white. Right was a definite thing and wrong was a definite thing, to be avoided by the way. Today wrong seems to gather everyone on it's side and right has grown dust and rusty for lack of use. There has to be a point of turning back to our values, or there is a point that we can not turn back. I hope we wise up to what we really need and embrace it. Our founding fathers laid a tremendous foundation in our nation composing of many things, but one of the most important is our Christian heritage. It is what gave them the strength to carry on even when the outlook was extremely bleak. The truth of the matter is that we ignore our Christian heritage to our own peril. It is the one part of our history that gets very little notice and gets absolutely no billing in our text books for the young and old. But it is the absolute necessity to our survival as a Nation. Remember this, people are judged and rewarded in the next life. Nations are judged and rewarded in this life.

Well, Sundays are a time for rest and reflection, after church of course. We need to pray for America that God will again smile upon us and bless us with a full measure of His grace.

Sleep sound, sleep save my friend.

For all is well down on the farm.

The Old Farmer