Labor Day

Right now in the USA is one of those weirdly named holidays. A day to rest from labor named after the thing we are resting from? 

The historically savvy know that it relates more to beginnings of Communism than anything else. Karl Marx and the struggle of the working class, etc. 

What’s truly weird is the complete loss of the concept of a holiday. Which derives from Holy Day. And that a nation might have a Holy Day would probably be a source of derision from the secular culture.   

Now we’ve managed to keep a few actual Holy Days in our line up of official holidays: Christmas and Thanksgiving. And even these are tenuous at best and detrimental at their worst. That Thanksgiving is now the kick off for voracious buying for the commercial nirvana that is Christmas morning gift opening is disheartening. 

The Holy Days instituted by God for the nation of Israel were based around an agrarian people.  Planting and harvest, cycles of the moon and the like. A rhythm built into the very fabric of the society. 

We have ours built in here: summer is marked between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The fall season of Halloween to Thanksgiving with a build up to Christmas. After New Years it’s the slog to spring marked around Easter (secular culture has stolen Holy Week from us, giving us instead the pathetic “spring break”). 

Then back to Memorial Day. A loop. And the older one gets the more one feels the repetitive nature of it all. The slow meandering brook of life.  We labor under the sun, toiling and laboring to an unknown end other than knowing we will be with our Lord. 

Now you might be wondering why I took you on this tortuous loop. It’s this: don’t separate the labor from the Holy God who gave it to you. Today is a Holy Day, an extra day of rest our Lord providentially provided for us. We were made to tend the garden of Eden. We were made to labor, to work. Not aimlessly, but to the good of our neighbor and the Glory of God. 

The culture may have forgotten about Holy Days, but our God surely has not. Someday all will be made right. Today let us rest and yearn a little for that day. 

Soli Deo Gloria