I know that the New Testament doesn’t specify how to spend Sundays, though we’re told that believers met together then. As NT Gentile Christians we’re not under the OT stipulations about the Sabbath. But some years ago I came across the last few verses of Isaiah 58, and they profoundly affected my thinking about the Lord’s Day:

13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:
14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

I began to realize that the “rules” concerning the OT Sabbath weren’t just about a day of rest from physical labor, though that was a part of it: but it was primarily a day for the Lord. There is a lot of emphasis in those verses on not doing “thine own pleasure,” but rather delighting in the Lord and in a day set aside for Him.

I had already been in the habit of not doing any work on Sundays other than what was necessary for meal preparation and clean-up (unless an emergency came up, like the time we came home church to find a leak had sprung in the pipe in the bathroom wall, or the Sunday morning before church when an upstairs bathroom overflowed and “rained” downstairs. We figured those were ox-in-the-ditch kinds of things. :))

But after discovering these verses, I began to take it a step further and tried to think of it as truly the Lord’s Day, and tried think of ways to truly make the day revolve around Him. As a wife and mom, I don’t think that passage means to close myself off in a room alone and spend great amounts of time in Bible reading and prayer. There may be seasons of life when that might be the case, but for now I don’t feel that’s the right application.

Of course, most of the day is taken up with church-related activities and meals. And for years Sunday afternoons have included a nap. I don’t function very well without a nap on Sunday afternoons, even though I don’t take an afternoon nap most other days. When our kids got old enough that they didn’t need a nap, they still had to do something quiet during that time. But Sunday evenings after the evening service I began to use for various restful and spiritual activities. Sometimes I would write letters (how is that spiritual activity done as unto the Lord, you might ask? Well, a lot of the day is given to “assembling yourselves together” with other believers, and writing is one way to communicate and minister. Even writing to lost loved ones is a ministry to them by letting them know you’re thinking about them). Sometimes I would play games with the kids. Sometimes I would read Christian books. As my kids have gotten older, sometimes we’ll all be in one room doing separate things (the older boys using laptops, the youngest playing, and I would be reading), and it’s cozy — we’ll comment to each other in-between what we’re doing. Sometimes now I’ll be on-line but restrict my reading to Christian sites.

Sunday evenings have become one of my favorite parts of the week. I love coming home from church knowing that I don’t “have” to toss laundry in (of course, that takes planning to get it done on other days) or “get things done.” I can just relax and enjoy it.