Almost every family finds Sunday a problem. Other days are well occupied with full programs; this one has a program for only part of its time. Other days are rich with the liberty of happy action, but this one is frequently marked by inaction, repression, and limitations. As soon as the evanescent pleasure of Sunday clothes has passed, for those for whom it existed at all, the children settle down to endure the day.
§ 1. THE MEANING OF THE DAY
Fathers and mothers who vent a sigh of relief when Sunday is over must marvel at the strains of "O day of joy and gladness." Yet this day defeats its purpose when it is of any other character. We have no right to rob it of its joy and its healing balm. On the day made for man, sacred to his highest good, whatever hinders the real happiness of the child ought to be set aside.
Instead of accepting traditions regarding the method of observing the Sunday, would it not be worth while to ask ourselves, For what use of the day can we properly be held responsible? Here are so many—fifty-two a year—days of special opportunity. To us who complain that business interferes with the personal education of our children through the week, what ought this day to mean? To us who lament the little time we can spend with our families, what ought this day to mean? And what ought we to try to make it mean to children?
We call this God's day; what must some children think of a God who robs his day of all pleasure? If this is the kind of day he makes, then how unattractive would be his years and eternity! It is the day when we have our best opportunity to show them what God is like, to interpret his world and his works in terms of beauty, kindness, riches of thought, and love.
It ought to be the day reserved for the best in life, for the treasures of affection, for the uses of the spirit. Whatever is done this day must come to this test, Is this a ministry to the life of goodness, truth, and loving service? Does this enrich lives? In other words, we may put the broad educational test to the day and its program and determine all by ministry to growing lives.
§ 2. CONSERVING THE VALUES
The family faces the problem of the opposition between the rights of man on this day and the greed of commerce, the fight between a day of rest and a day of work. Man's right to rest is assured, legally, but commerce in the name of amusement and in the guise of petty and unnecessary trading constantly maintains its fight to invade the day of rest, to turn it from ministry to man as a person to the dull level of the week of ministry to things. The home has much at stake in this struggle. It needs one day free from the life that tears its members apart, free from the toil that engrosses thought, free for its members to live together as spiritual beings.
In the need for one day, free from the things that hinder and devoted to the life of the spirit, the home finds the guiding principle for the use of the day; all members are to be trained to use it as a glorious opportunity, a welcome period, a day of the best things of life. It is devoted to personality, to man's rights as a religious being.
Surely one of the best things of life will be that we shall meet one another, shall look into faces of friends and companions! And this opportunity of social mingling is lifted to a high level when it is an act of the larger family life, the life that brings God and man into one family. That is what the church meeting and service ought to be: our Father's larger family getting together on the day of the life that makes them one. For the child the church school and the children's service of worship are their immediate points of vital touch with the church family. If we think of the day as affording us the pleasure of social mingling with friends and members of that family, Sunday morning will cease to be a period of unwilling observance of empty duties. Of course that will depend, too, on the measure in which the church and school grasp their opportunity to make this the best of days.[31]