The Stewardship of Weekends
The concept of “weekend” is a fairly new in the history of the world. The term was first used in the late 1800s and was not commonly used until around 1935—only about 80 years!
The concept of Sabbath and one day of rest is much, much older. Thousands of years older.
Before the late 1800s almost everyone was vocationally tied to the earth. That created its own rhythm. Cows must be milked every day. Everyone worked close to or at home. The Sabbath was a gift!
The weekend came along with the shift to factory and office work.
Weekend, in its first usage, referred to Saturday noon to Monday morning. Today it spans to Friday afternoon to Monday morning and roughly once a month we add an extra day to that!
This helps our multicultural society. Islam has its Friday holy day. Judaism has it Saturday Sabbath and Christianity remembers Easter by worshiping on Sundays.
It’s great that all this time has been cleared from our schedule to relate to God. But now that most of us don’t have to milk the cows, what do we do with it?
We suspect there always has been a temptation to party away the Sabbath gift. God noticed!