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Are you at home on the Lord’s Day today? Silas M. Andrews has a book for you: The Sabbath at Home (1840)? It encourages those not able to attend on the public worship services to spend their time wisely in keeping with the purpose of the Lord’s Day.
In this short volume, Andrews encourages families and individuals at home to read the Scriptures, pray, sing praises to God, meditate, catechize, and read godly literature. All of these are involved in profitable Sabbath observance, he says, and help us to aim our thoughts heavenward on this holy day.
He also discourages “Sunday visiting,” which under today’s circumstances (vis-à-vis the coronavirus) might seem to make sense. But his aim was primarily to help Christians avoid vain and frivolous conversation on the Lord’s Day. He does encourage visiting the sick to offer spiritual and physical comfort. This encouragement can be followed in some cases these days, but in other cases, we may avail ourselves of electronic technology to commune with others at a distance and still adhere to the thrust of Andrews’ counsel.
Andrews also connects the importance of public worship to Sabbath observance at home. How those who are at home ought to long for the courts of the Lord! Thankfully, technology can be help today in this regard, but it can never be a substitute.
This little book offers people who are at home on the Lord’s Day some valuable encouragement to redeem the time wisely. Today might well be the day when a book from 1840 speaks to us most clearly in 2020. Check it out here, and may God bless you on this Lord’s Day (3 John 2).
