April 06, 2015
Day of Worship
One day after worship
services I overheard one couple inviting another to lunch on the spur of the
moment. I was reminded that years ago it was the norm for folks to invite a
visitor home for Sunday dinner. It may have appeared to be a spontaneous fellowship
effort, but the reality was families planned ahead for the noon meal including
putting extra food in the crockpot so they could invite a guest home for lunch.
Sadly many of us today don’t plan our Sunday as a day of rest, worship and
fellowship. Instead we schedule a couple hours for Sunday worship and our after-church
plans include grabbing a quick bite, laundry, yard work, naps and television
sports. It’s amazing how far we’ve drifted from the example of the early church's
extended worship session. “On the first day of the week we came together to
break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the
next day, kept on talking until midnight” (Acts 20:7 NIV).
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----I’m supposing it’s a good thing we don’t follow that tradition anymore. For in as much as we do have many preachers who can keep on talking well past midnight, none of them have Paul’s faith and dedication to the Lord it would require to raise from the dead those who would fall out the windows and die of boredom, like did Eutychus. These folk’s willingness to listen to a sermon lasting all afternoon and all evening unto midnight as well as anybody’s ability to speak that long always perplexed me until recently. It finally dawned on me that the Jewish day begins at sundown. So everyone came together at dusk on Sabbath evening which was the beginning of their first day of the week. So it was an evening meal they enjoyed, and if Paul’s preaching was good enough to last the couple hours or so it would take to get past midnight, maybe poor Eutychus had some cheese and wine, which together puts a soul to sleep better than Thanksgiving turkey. Maybe it wasn’t Paul’s fault after all. Then the rest of their Sunday would begin with a good night’s sleep, well prepped for by a viciously boring sermon. I have no learning in what would’ve happened from sun-up to sun-down on Sunday in Paul’s day. But since then, tradition has rendered that part of Sunday as the worship and fellowship time instead of Saturday evening.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Steve,
Well that clears a lot up. I visited a two-hour charismatic, faith healing, talking in tongues service and after more than an hour I had a hard time staying alert — even with all that was going on. I’m so glad you shared your dawning that Paul didn’t preach from morning until midnight. You soothed my case of attention deficit disorder.
Gail
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