Sunday Morning - a picture to hang on a peg.

Sunday Morning by A.B. Durand

    I was raised in a Southern Baptist minister's family. My dad was a pastor, what we might now call a "senior pastor".  Sunday mornings as you might understand, were very important to my family. Mom would put on a vinyl of George Beverly Shea, Dad would be standing, shaving at the mirror, reciting his sermon and Steve and I would be hiding under the covers waiting until the last possible threat from our mom before getting up. No one was allowed to be emotional or loud on Sunday morning. Dad wanted a certain atmosphere so he would be ready for the "Sunday show". It was Sunday morning, after all, the Lord's Day.
     All my years growing up in our home we had a picture on our living room wall entitled, "Sunday Morning". It was a colonial era picture of a family walking out of their home going to church. The artist was A. B. Durand. After I married and I had a family of my own, I told my natural family I wanted this picture for myself. That was a mistake. Suddenly the value of that painting skyrocketed and everybody including some visiting ministers wanted that picture! It has since "disappeared" into the dark recesses of my family.
       Thinking about that picture made me decide that I would just get a copy and have it framed and be done with it. So I began, not knowing the painter's name, to google "Sunday Morning" and I clicked "image". How difficult could it be? Sunday morning as it turned out was a popular name for nearly everything imaginable.  Let's see there were; tranquil pastoral scenes, busy streets, gross looking breakfasts of eggs and bacon, alluring men and women, well I could go on but you take a look. The page looked like every thought I'd ever had of anything, except, you guessed it, A.B. Durand's idealized Sunday Morning.
         Sunday Mornings in our day has taken on different meaning from those days of Durand or even mother's tranquil mornings with George Beverly Shea. Sunday used to be the Lord's day! Whatever happened to that concept? Come to think of it,  it was probably Jesus' fault. Wasn't it Jesus who said "Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath"(Mark 2:27 KJV)? One look at that page and we can see what man did with the Sabbath. One in about every 10-12 pictures was a church or something family, everything else was snap shots of man's mind, cluttered and crazy. This was certainly man's Sabbath.
      The Sabbath may be made for man but wasn't man made to honor God? It made me question myself on how much am I honoring the Sabbath or the Lord's day or the Lord on any of His days. I know we do not celebrate Saturdays, but worship on Sunday. Somewhere, it seems, in the shuffle something got lost. If I find a copy of that picture I want to hang it prominently on our wall.  It should symbolize my placing the Lord first in my life. Like the peg, a nail driven into the wall prophesied by Isaiah as a hanger for what the Lord wants (The Peg in a Firm Place, This Week, Volume IX (1978)p 160). To be obedient to what He wants is what the picture now means to me. Sure, I probably have the freedom to do otherwise but the freedom I want is to do His will. I will count myself lucky if I am able to do his will with the time I have. Maybe I am still facing the day with Lord like I did those Sunday mornings hiding under the sheets. Maybe I 'll go get a vinyl, well a mp3, of GB Shea and start facing my day with more of an atmosphere for God, like the painting has been saying all along, "Step out, motion gently to your wife, show her the way down the road to the house of God. Hurry up that son of yours to get that shoe tied. Don't  be late. Get out there behind your father. He's been walking that way for a long time."
  Sunday Morning, an oil on canvas, by Asher Brown Durand.

The Father's Family

Recently we have been hearing sermons on our Father's Family or something near to this theme. In our youth meeting one of the leaders, we will call him Jon, decided to substitute the word  family for the word kingdom. He read us a whole bunch of fun scriptures that allowed us to see them differently. Why don't we do the same? Let us look at Matthew 18 when the disciples came to ask Jesus who was the greatest in the (now substitute kingdom with family) who is the greatest in the family of God. Jesus pulled over a little child and said unless you become as a little child you will no way see the family of God. Wow. It works fairly well there. But wait we are not trying to change scripture and make a new "Family Bible Translation" that would be the FBT bible. No we are just taking a different read on some familiar maybe too familiar verses. On many of the stories and parables it is amazing how much household language is used. A common usage of the Kingdom is found in the "Lord's Prayer".  Here we have Jesus as the "Lord" which is of course kingly language. But really that name is applied to the prayer by others and not Jesus.  To him he was teaching his disciples how to talk to the Father. He begins the prayer with family language. "Our Father..." Of course if He is our Father then we are his sons and daughters. We are in His family. I looked up basilei√a, kingdom, in Louw & Nida. Now not to stretch the point, but well yes I am. Anyway they do talk about kingdom being related to blood line and being inherited. A domain that is inherited. We know this to be true that families pass on the kingship or try too. The one in England is a grand example where the king and queen are seen simply as a "royal family". We do not have many real life examples around, but England does. God Bless the Queen! 
Having this little back story let us substitute family for kingdom in our brother Jesus' prayer. "Our Father who art in Heaven Holy be your name, Your Family come Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. For your is the Family and glory forever amen."
Well it works fairly well. That last family doesn't quite get it for me.  Anyway it might be a fun exercise to do those substitutions and watch how many times house hold language follows "kingdom".   One last scripture comes to mind. Ephesians 3:14-15;  "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named."
Today I took my grandson to the local mountains (big hills) to play in some snow. As I was ridding along I saw most of Los Angeles up on hills with their families sliding, building snowmen and generally having fun. It struck me how our Father is so good to us in providing in his wonderful creation times for our families to play and relate. It was so easy to worship Him as our heavenly Father who gives us every good gift (James 1:17).