Weekends are for...

Weekends are, for many, non-existent. As farmers will attest to, particularly in droughts, weekends mean that the stock still need to be fed, dams need to be checked, bogged stock pulled out of the mud and cows milked if you live on a dairy. This is the way it has always been for those in the Farming industry.

As a working mother with young children, weekends allowed me to catch up on those jobs that had dropped down the priority list such as extra washing, getting children to clean rooms and running children to sporting events.

For shift workers, weekends often means working and the number of occupations being converted to this seems to be increasing. A few years back no one would ever imagine sales staff working on shifts. For hospital staff, police and ambulance workers the weekends are a time they dread as their workloads increase dramatically.

When my father was a boy, for most workers weekends only consisted of Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Sunday was the day of rest for almost everyone. It was expected that you would attend a church service and send time with the family, it was considered a day of worship.

When God created the world, even He rested for a day. (Genesis 2:2-3) The perfection meant that we didn’t need to toil, but once this was broken we had to work. This means that time needs to be set aside to rest and worship our God (Exodus 34:21, Exodus 20:9 and Deuteronomy 5:13).

We should worship our Lord every day regardless of whether we are working or not but we also need to rest from our work and I understand that for working people that day could be any day during the week not just Sunday.