A lawful (and sweet) Sunday

I'm sure there have been better days, but dang if I can remember them. I'm sure children's births, grand children's births, even Super Bowls have come, but right now in a tired delirium, I've come up empty in the memory department.

Oh, being at a game where my football team scores a record number of points and wins by a record number of points and makes my stay at the stadium a calm, assured night is one thing -- and a very, very good thing.

But it, this glorious day, began with church. We had church, in all its shapes and forms. We came together for 25 minutes. A song, The Summons, a special song, Heart of Music, a 10-minute sermon on Jesus telling us to love our neighbor.

Then we as a church broke for various mission sits. The church delivered 67 baskets of bread to a neighborhood or two in the community. The church painted a carport area of a local. The church did yard work on a local's land who couldn't do for herself. The church loved as I believe Jesus would have us love.

Only one man made it less than perfect, and I want to examine that person's right to believe as he did. He jumped in my face about our work being done on Sunday. He has a perfect right to do that. He believes that God said we should take a sabbath, and he believes that sabbath is Sunday.

So, he forcefully got in my face about it.

Okay.

I offer the 12th chapter of Matthew as my defense to anyone shaking their head in agreement with this gentlemen right about now.

¹ At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. ² When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
³ He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? ⁴ He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. ⁵ Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? ⁶ I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. ⁷ If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’^[a] you would not have condemned the innocent. ⁸ For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
⁹ Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, ¹⁰ and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
¹¹ He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? ¹² How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Not a perfect day, was it. But dang if I can remember a better one. It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.