The Lord’s Day is something special. It was on the Lord’s Day that our salvation was assured by the resurrection of our Savior from the dead. It was on the Lord’s Day that the disciples gathered together to remember the suffering of our Lord in that special supper of the Lord. It’s just special, Sunday is.

It used to be that folks truly sanctified Sunday. There were special clothes called “Sunday-go-to-meetin’-clothes,” the ones where stiffly starched shirts scratched at sun-burned necks causing little boys to scrooch around in their seats, and feel silly. Where bright pinafore dresses and anklets that looked like flower petals just above patent leather shoes made little girls seem twice as pretty as they did on the school ground on Friday. Men dressed in their “Sunday best” and women were adorned in the frocks and frills of femininity. You just did that on Sunday.

I guess it wasn’t an accurate depiction of what we did—maybe not even scriptural terminology—but, we really looked forward to “Sunday school.” We had these little cards with a picture on the front and a story on the back. We each had one, all for our very own. There was a certain smell about the classroom on Sunday morning. I’m still not sure how to describe it, but sometimes when I go to preach in some country church, I catch a whiff of it again. And the memory verse was at the bottom of the back of the card. Boy, did we enjoy it. We talked about God and Jesus and what it meant to be a Christian—just lots of good Sunday stuff like that.

Sundays were special because of just being together. Mostly, we didn’t get to see one another during the week, at least not in the same way that we saw one another on Sunday. You saw your friends in a different way on Sunday; they were somehow different than on Friday night at the ball game. There was a kind of gentle attitude that pervaded the gathering on Sunday, one that said something like, “I sure like you!” I sure did like the togetherness of Sunday dinner, too. We’d all get together and eat, and laugh and talk, and eat. It was just wonderful, Sunday was.

I still feel that way when we come together here. Oh, things have changed—and not all for the worse, I guess. But it seems to me we’ve lost some things along the way, too. Things like dressing up on Sunday, or having Sunday dinner together, or making sure we have our “Sunday school lesson.”

Let’s don’t ever let the really good things get away, OK? Let’s hang on to the little things that make Sundays something special here at Southside. We owe it to our kids. We owe it to ourselves.