Blog: Max Dawson
November 23, 2015
I was raised on the east side of Indianapolis, Indiana. Our family was, by standards of that time, middle income. Dad was a hard worker; and he needed to be because there were five kids in our family. We always had enough food on the table. And, we had decent clothes, though nothing expensive.
We rarely ever went to church as a family. Though there was the possibility that we might all go to our denominational church together on Easter or Christmas. But not every Easter or Christmas.
Like lots of folks today, it was easy to make excuses for not going to worship. A favorite one that my dad would use every couple of years had to do with the clothes we wore to church. If we had new clothes (Easter outfits), dad would say, “The folks at church are gonna look at us and say, ‘Well, here come the Dawsons. They are only coming to church because they have new clothes.'” Dad, in order to prevent anyone from thinking we were showing off new clothes, would say, “I think we had better stay home this Sunday; maybe we will go some other time.”
On the other hand, if we had no new clothes that year, dad would say, “What are the people at church going to think? They are going to say, ‘Here come the Dawsons in the same old clothes they had last year.’ I don’t think we should go to church this Easter.”
So, you can see that with that kind of thinking we didn’t go to church as a family very often. And, in defense of my dad, there was probably some justification to his thinking. The folks at that denomination seemed to be more than a little bit uppity.
So, the family church thing was pretty much out. But my brother Russ and I would always try to go to church. We would usually make it two or three Sundays a month. And it nearly always meant walking to church, unless someone in the neighborhood gave us a ride. The church building was more than a mile from our house.
Whether we walked or rode in a car, mom was always diligent to make sure that we wore our Sunday best. For my brother and me, that was usually a sport jacket and slacks and a good shirt. No ties. Russ sometimes wore a jacket that I had worn a couple of years before. It was our Sunday best. That was important to mom, even though she rarely went to church with us. We wore our Sunday best.
A FINAL WORD
The bottom line point of all this is not about clothes at all. It is not about wearing our Sunday best. It is about giving God our Sunday best. Here are some questions for you to ponder about yesterday.
1. Did you treat Sunday as “the Lord’s Day”? It is His, you know (Revelation 1:10). Or did you devote yourself only to “the Lord’s Hour.”
2. Did you come to worship after a good night’s rest? Or were you up late and barely got enough sleep to make it through the morning?
3. Did you come prepared for Bible class? Or did you come with a blank book and give the teacher a blank look during class discussion?
4. Did you listen carefully as the preacher presented soul-stirring truth from God’s word? Or did you get a little upset with him because he preached a little long?
5. Did you return for worship Sunday evening with the thought that you would learn more about how to live? Or did you get your fill of God on Sunday morning?
6. Did you resolve that by giving God your Sunday best, you would gain strength to face the world this week? Or did you attend just to say you were there?
Your Sunday best has nothing to do with your clothes. It has everything to do with what God is seeking. Listen to John 4:23.
“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
Blessings to all,
–Max