by Dave Beckwith

Created on: March 03, 2008

Anyone that is old enough to remember that old Johnny Cash song "Sunday Morning Coming Down" will recall the displaced loneliness of the singer as he rambled through town while everyone else went about Sunday traditions with their families. While he smelled chicken frying and heard children playing, he also heard a lonely church bell reminding him of the disappearing dreams of yesterday. It always evokes strong emotions when I hear it.

That's the magic of a Sunday. It has a feel like no other day of the week. It's Sunday. It even sounds more laid back. When our kids were young we would go out to eat after church and stop to see my Mom. It got to be a tradition for us to stop at Grandma's house to visit, eat, watch TV and fall asleep.
We have tons of photos of our children in every stage of growing up, each capturing another memory; dressed in their new Easter Sunday outfit, Halloween costume or showing off their painted face after an Arts and Crafts festival. Most of the photos had a similar background, Gram's kitchen table or backyard.

Sundays were always set apart as special. Regardless of what waited for us in the week ahead, it didn't matter. It was Sunday. We are excused from thinking about the stresses in the coming days. The sense of dread about a task, meeting or coworkers had no effect on us today. Sundays give us the pleasure of living for the moment; a luxury that we usually deny ourselves the rest of the week. We accomplish nothing and it feels great.

It's in the Bible that God rested after creating the world. To me, that is a permanent, universal leave of absence granted once a week. It's like the Almighty telling us to take it easy and not strive so much. After all, if God took a rest and didn't create anything, then certainly we could cease from our hassles for one day. His work was more important than ours.

I confess that I made the mistake of occasionally wondering what item that I could be crossing off my agenda if I wasn't lounging around with my family. Looking back it's easy to see the silliness of that concern. I remember my very young children dozing on the sofa beside me. I remember the fun we had playing Scrabble and other board games. I remember the giggling while watching a movie that I wouldn't have chosen if it was up to me. I recall going for pizza after a round of goofy golf.

The strange thing is that I never remember the things I needed to get done. Was it rotating the tires on a car that's in the junkyard now? Maybe it was cleaning the gutters on a house we sold four years ago? It could have been the taxes that I had to file before the deadline; tax returns that were fed to the shredder years ago. It may have been serving a company or boss that I no longer work for. I can't recall. But I regret the distraction on those lazy days with kids, now college age that are too old and busy to snooze the afternoon away with Mom and Dad.

But the good thing is that it's never too late to alter our view of life. It is a great thing to give oneself permission to slow down, kick back and relax a little. It almost feels like an indulgence in irresponsibility. But it's not. Like any change, logic requires us to weigh the costs against the benefits. The benefits include a slower pace, an enjoyable weekend and maybe some memories to reflect back on later. The costs are that it takes longer to scratch something off our lists; things we will not recall in a short time anyway.

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