Keeping Sunday the Lord’s Day When Stuck at Home

We live in unusual days. The Coronavirus has caused several states to put their residents under a "shelter in place" order, and the states that haven't gone that far have at least issued a ban on meeting in groups. Across America, Christians are faced with the prospect of Sunday at home, whether for the short term or for an indeterminable "month of Sundays" as the saying goes.

 This is a challenge for us, because God has always intended for Christians to fellowship with other Christians. His plan for the church hasn't been that we each spend Sundays in our separate houses, reading our Bibles in solitude, so it is naturally  difficult to keep the Lord's Day feeling like the Lord's Day when we cannot be with other Christians. 

So, what's a house-bound Christian to do? 

Whether we stay home because of illness, cancellation, weather, quarantine, or whatever other uncontrollable circumstance might keep us from gathering with other believers on a given Sunday, we are still to take a day to rest and to focus on Him.

As I've thought through for myself how to keep Sunday the Lord's Day without the option of going to church, I settled on a few ideas that I think will help me accomplish this. Perhaps they will help you, as well!

1. Start the day with God.

This is something I try to do anyway, but it can be easy to fall into the rut of habit and not really pay attention to one's time with God. It can become just one more thing to check off one's list. A Sunday at home presents a reminder to bring the heart back into your time with God. It also (hopefully) is a time when you might have some extra time in the morning which you could use to prolong your time with God.

Time with God can, in fact, include nearly all the elements of an ordinary church service: worship in song, prayer, Scripture reading, and perhaps a sermon or commentary on the passage you have read.

 Our time with God on Sundays should be at least as precious and refreshing as on any other day, and while at home, with nowhere to go, we should be better able to keep what we have learned in our time with God with us all day long, thinking and meditating on it throughout the day.

2. Gather together (as you can).

For those who are housebound or under quarantine, this might seem to be a silly thing to say, but in our age of technology, it is easy to reach out to others and fellowship verbally when we cannot be physically present with them. There are lots of possible applications to this idea.

For those, like myself, who live in a house with other family members, it is quite easy to gather together on a Sunday and have one's own "church service". After all, Jesus did say that "For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matthew 18:20).

I have warm memories of the few Sundays we were unable to go out to church during my childhood, whether because of weather or illness. If all of us were to stay home, Mommy and Daddy would cheer us up by bringing the "Sunday School box" down out of the attic. This was a box full of interesting items left over from the days when they had taught Sunday School before we were born. Because this box was reserved for churchless Sundays, we did not get it out very often, which made it quite a treat. We would pull each item out of the box, one by one, and then my parents would lead us in our own at-home Sunday School class. Honestly, I remember the box better than the lessons, but the principle still holds that Christians stuck at home together can still have their own "church service".

From what I have read, this was a common daily practice in Christian homes during the Victorian era. Now, I won't say that the Victorians were perfect, or that we should all try to make society go back to what it was then, but as with any time in history, there were some good things going on. One of these was the concept of the "family altar", where the whole family, and often the whole household, servants and all, would gather together to sing, read Scripture, and pray. There would often be a short lesson for the children to learn or recite, and the head of the household would often give some explanation of the text of Scripture read.

In modern times, we would call this family devotions, and Sunday is the perfect day to make sure this happens. If family devotions are already part of your family's daily life, Sunday could be a day in which you add something to it to make it special. Does your family like to sing? Have a special time of singing together. Do they like to memorize? Have a time for reciting all the verses each family member has memorized. Does your family have a flair for the dramatic? Have some of the family act out a portion of Scripture. Each family is different, so each family's devotion time will be a bit different as well. But as long as it draws the family's focus to the Lord, it will be time well-spent.

For those who find themselves alone, gathering together may mean reaching out to others over phone or text or email or even a video call like FaceTime or Skype. Mommy has a couple friends who regularly "meet" with her over the phone to pray together. Just because you aren't able to be present with other Christians physically doesn't mean you can't still have fellowship with them. --And it doesn't have to be a whole "church service", either. It can be as simple as texting a verse to a friend or telling them you're praying for them.

I'm told that during the 1918 outbreak of the Spanish Flu, many churches had to close for a time, similarly to what we're seeing today. One pastor I read about, Rev. W.B. Hinson, kept in touch with his congregation with the weekly church bulletin, which he sent out at his own expense. In these bulletins, he wrote to his church, encouraging them to keep focused on God while they were unable to meet, as well as bringing to their attention the preciousness of having a church to gather with at all. The result? The very first time the church was again allowed to gather, their congregation had increased "almost two-fold"! You can read about it here.

Many pastors are doing similarly, either through emails, podcasts, or live-streamed sermons. These are meant not only to teach and encourage those in the congregation who cannot meet together, but also to give the sense of fellowship as well as to keep the congregation on common ground, ready to move forward in unison when we can again meet together. After all, part of what unifies a local church is the common teaching we hear each week. It points us all in the same direction and gives us a Biblical foundation upon which to base our interactions with each other. 

3.  Choose activities that draw your focus towards God, and choose to refrain from activities that draw your focus away from Him. 

For many centuries of Christian history, Sunday was considered to be a day only for spiritual pursuits. One problem that arose from this was a cultural expectation that certain things were for "Sunday" but not for the rest of the week. The current attitude of Christianity towards this concept of a day set apart only for spiritual things is largely one of disapproval, citing the fact that we should be focused on spiritual things every day, or that it is "legalistic" to spend a day only doing that which is spiritual in nature, but I think we can learn a lot from those devoted Christians who made one day set apart, choosing to focus only on God and choosing not to focus on worldly things. 

Yes, this should be a daily focus, but that just means that every other day should be like Sunday, not that Sunday should be like every other day.

Obviously reading one's Bible and spending time in prayer are activities which should draw the Christian's focus toward God, but there are other things we can do that will keep our minds focused on the Lord throughout our day. For example, I have a number of Christian biographies I could read, as well as shelf upon shelf of commentaries, studies, and other Christian literature. Perhaps now is the time to get that big concordance off the shelf and do a good, old-fashioned word study.

 Studying the Scriptures is not a dry, boring task. You never know what God might do in your heart through the simple act of choosing a word from a passage you've read and looking up all the other references that use that word. Not only is it a good mental task that will keep your mind sharp, it is a task that the Holy Spirit can use to keep you spiritually sharp as well.

Sometimes, I find myself having to do something "mindless" on Sundays, like putting away laundry or doing dishes, and I have recently been enjoying listening to sermons or Bible study podcasts while I do these things. Another way to focus my mind on the Lord while my hands are busy with "earthly" necessities is to listen to some good Christian music.

Another activity that comes to mind is transcribing Scripture. There are lots of "Scripture writing plans" on Pinterest and other sites, and taking the time to write out verses on a specific topic or even to write out a whole chapter or book by hand can be a good way to spend a portion of your Sunday. Writing the verses out by hand makes us slow down and pay attention to every word, every phrase, even every punctuation mark! It is a good way to train our minds to notice small details as we read God's Word and to think more deeply about specific portions of Scripture.

4. Remember to rest

God is clear throughout Scripture that the "Sabbath" (which Christians began to celebrate on Sunday to commemorate Christ's resurrection) was to be a day of rest.

My church has a running joke about the Sunday afternoon nap being "the third ordinance of the church", but it is true that Sunday is to be spent not only in focusing on God, but also in enjoying the opportunity of rest He has provided to us. It is good for us to take time to rest on a Sunday, whether we are resting our bodies in sleep or our hearts and minds by taking time to be still before the Lord, rest is an indisputably important part of keeping the Lord's Day.

I think one of the keys to a Sunday at home is to treat it like a normal Sunday as much as possible —nap included— and to keep one's heart grateful for the extra rest God has allowed for that day.

After all, we spend so much time rushing here and there that we come to view rest as a very valuable (and rare!) thing, but it is also a thing we tend to grumble about when we are finally forced to have time for it. When we are sick or snowed in or quarantined in some fashion, it can be easy to grumble about what we're missing or to wonder why God would allow such a thing to happen. Could it be that God's people need to learn to rest and look to Him for themselves without the external motions of going to church?

Above all, while you are obliged to spend your Sundays at home, remember that God has a good purpose for allowing this trial —for trial it is— and that He is with you always. He has promised never to leave you, never to forsake you. Nothing can change who God is. Rest in that truth and have a blessed Lord's Day.