Sunday-Centered Homes
As Christian women, we should have homes that focus on the Lord’s Day. Church (attendance and participating in the means of grace, not ministries) should be one of the primary goals of our homemaking. We’ve talked about this more philosophically in other articles:
· HearthKeeping and Serving the Church
· The Intangibleness of HearthKeeping
What I want to focus on is the practical ways we can do that. First, a couple of caveats to keep us in proper bounds.
1. It is vital that we buy into the importance of our church attendance and membership. We must get on board with participating in the means of grace. This is our starting point. We have to be all in on the preaching, praying, Lord’s Supper, and Baptism. There is no point to this if we don’t believe in our utter need for these things, and the need our husbands and our children have for these things. We need to be present and participating in them. The preaching of the Word of Christ is the Word of Christ. We need to hear it. This is the honoring of the Sabbath day.
2. Don’t turn this into an opportunity to nag your husband. We don’t nag to be mean, we nag when we believe firmly in something. If your husband is struggling with church attendance, don’t make it harder for him by making Sunday an afterthought. If he isn’t struggling with church attendance don’t make it a struggle for him. Help him by making Sundays as easy as possible. Pray for him and his leadership. Nagging is never an option. If believe there is a lack of spiritual leadership, please talk with your pastor and your husband! No nagging.
3. Much of Sunday remembrance and honoring is bound up in Christian Liberty. The Scriptures don’t give us a lot of lists. Don’t take anything I’m suggesting as law. See the principles behind the illustrations and do what works best for your home and your people. We can break the Sabbath on Wednesday by not living in light of the resurrection and we can break it on Sunday by not participating in our churches’ worship services. We have the freedom to decide what are acts of necessity and mercy in our homes. Don’t take on burdens God never intended or commanded and most certainly don’t put them on fellow believers.
4. Setting aside a day of worship and rest is an act of trust in the Lord. We must trust to His care what we got done this week and what we didn’t. We must trust His providence and provision. He has commanded rest and we need to obey. He is caring for us and ours and will continue to do so.
So, with those things guarding and guiding us, what are some practical, hands-on, boots-on-the-ground things we can do to be ready for Sunday?
Start with Sunday: Start by thinking about Sunday’s needs and work back. While we do dishes, commute to one thing or another, pull weeds, or sip a glass of wine, we can think about what has to be done for Sunday to function with the least bit of hindrance. What food will we need, what chores can’t be left until Monday, and what mental and emotional things are a must? Next, we take that list and see what days which things can be done before Sunday. What can we do Saturday? What can be done Friday? Working back from Sunday, we design the week’s routine. What we need for Sunday is our starting point for the rest of the week. If we know something has to be ironed to be worn to church, we don’t start the laundry on Saturday night.
It’s important to keep Sunday’s To Do list as truncated as possible. Sundays are to be a day of rest. People still need to eat, but they may not need a five-course meal. They may live with paper plates and sandwiches. In my home, we typically eat a low-key breakfast with the least amount of dishes I can work with, lunch at church, and an easy “leftovers” dinner. I often cook Saturday’s dinner on Saturday morning so that the dishes can be done before Saturday night which makes it easier to do a quick clean of the kitchen on Sunday morning. (I’m not a ‘can’t go to bed unless the dishes are done’ woman.)
The wonderful part of doing this is we are building honoring and remembering the Lord’s Day directly into our workflows. Sunday is no longer something that we chaotically get around to after the mess of Saturday. Sunday becomes the center point around which our homes flow. From that small stream grows a river of being stalwart members of our churches, fellow soldiers who remind others to hold the line no matter what.
Close the House: It can be very helpful to the mental and emotional well-being of our people to clear up all the projects and scraps of week-life. Putting them away prevents them from screaming at us while we prepare for worship and rest. I try to make sure the surface of my table is clean and everything is tidied on Saturday. I put my calendar away, my project book, my kitchen journal, and my menu book. It all gets put away. Sunday is not the day I am managing my home deeply. I’ve set my home away, in a way, so that I can focus on the Lord’s Day and resting.
I do leave a pen and some post-it notes out so that when I have one of those pesky thoughts intrude into my Sunday about the coming week, or something that needs to be ordered, or a task I shouldn’t forget, and any other old thing, I write it down. That way I won’t forget and won’t try to hold it in my head. In pops the thought, onto the paper it goes, move on. Phones work well for this too. The goal is simply to keep the more earthly things corralled so we can focus on church and the means of grace and rest.
Subconscious Signals: These are things we purposely do on Saturday that signal to the whole family that Sunday is coming. Setting clothes out, taking showers, meal prepping, cleaning, and closing away projects are all involved with this. They all send those signals to the whole gang that the focus is about to shift from weekday work to Sunday worship and rest. But I challenge you, ladies, to do something that brings joy and delight. This is a great time to change sheets and towels. Slipping into a fresh bed on Saturday night can be a great way to tell everyone that the best day is here, just on the other side of sleep. Having special meals that only happen on Sunday (as long as they don’t ruin your rest) are a wonderful thing. Saturday can be a good time to prep for this. Saturday evening routines of reading, specific movies, and handcrafts can make the preparation for Sunday special. We don’t want to be accused of making Sunday an annoyance or frustration or just plain ugly to our families. Let’s think about ways we can transition into Sundays that are special.
In my home, we end the day early. It gives us time to rest ahead of the high energy demands of Sunday and signals that the week and its work are done. When I was a kid, my family read special books to help our thoughts gather on the rich truth of Sunday. We had a special meal on Saturday night that had a focus on being thankful and candles at each place. Preparing special Sunday morning playlists can set the stage. I have one, it’s all my favorite war movies soundtracks. I’m weird, I know. But this puts me in exactly the right state of mind for being in church listening to the preaching. Subconscious signals are such an important part of our labors, ladies. Let’s make Sunday beautiful!
Commitments: Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest for our souls first and foremost. It is a day to honor and think on the Lord specifically, and all that He has done for us. It is hard to do this if we view this day as a chore-catch-up day, a me-day, a sleep-in day, or even excessively a preparation-for-the-coming-week day. (Not law, just a thought.) We need to guard and garden Sunday as a day of spiritual rest first. Physical rest is part of that, yes. If we are not focused on our homemaking chores we will actually stop and rest, but the first goal of Sunday is spiritual rest and refreshment, which the Lord has told us happens via the means of grace.
Monday-Saturday are the days we’ve been given to get our work done. This is the time we have for laundry, cooking, and cleaning along with all our projects, schoolwork, work work, and gardening. Take a deep breath for just a moment and imagine taking a moment to rest. A moment to stop. A time to halt the machine of labor and be still. Wrap up your chores. Water your plants. Fold the laundry. On Saturday. Look at the week and make it your goal to be done with all the things by Saturday, and as an act of faith, step away. Dear fellow HearthKeepers, if we can’t do this, we need to reevaluate our commitments to other things. If we have taken so much of life in that we can’t rest on Sunday we need to start saying no.
This may not feel practical. It may seem more philosophical, but this is practical.
We need to look at our commitments to friends, family, work, sports, and other types of such activities and evaluate how they are affecting our ability to be in church bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. If they’re excessively hindering that, if we are chronically grumpy, late, tired, overwhelmed, and using Sunday to catch up, we are probably doing too much during the week. Our systems and routines should start on Sunday and work back, and so should our commitments and social calendars.
For many of us, this is the hardest part to gain control over. It is hard to tell people no. It’s hard to gatekeep showers, birthdays, get-togethers, and all the fun, special, wonderful celebrations of family and friendship. We must take stock of our families’ ability to be in church, on time, for all the Sunday services. If we simply can’t get up early enough or everyone is out of sorts, we should look at our calendars and see if we have made too many commitments. They’re not more important than the preaching of the Word and the gathering of the saints.
Side Note: Do you see that we don’t have to be annoying with our witnessing? If we do this, people will see that we’re weird. We don’t have to go out of our way to be different. Making the choice to be homemakers, making the choice to start on Sunday sets us apart from the world quite strongly.
Side Note: I’m not suggesting becoming a hermit and withdrawing from our engagement with the world and our communities. I am suggesting we don’t feel beholden to have lives that are so busy we’re in a state of chronic franticness, and that we make sure being in church ready and able to participate in the preaching be our first priority.
As women, we have our fingers woven deeply into the ordinary things of life. We shoulder the burdens of food, health, and home management. Hopefully, we’re all blooming in our roles. Hopefully, we’re all all-in on the importance of our housekeeping and homemaking. But our identity is in Christ and Christ has called us not to forsake the gathering of ourselves together. Christ has blessed many of us with husbands. It is under the preaching that they will become better men. Christ has blessed many of us with children. It is under the preaching that they will hear the gospel. Christ loves us and it is under the preaching we become better woman, wives, and mothers. We women are often the holders of ruin or blessing in the lives of the people around us. To do this job well and to finish the race, we need to be refreshed, convicted, encouraged, and re-armed. This happens under the means of grace. Let’s encourage and help each other to create homes that start on Sunday and build from there.
