Take a positive approach.
Good things are good every day. Bad things are bad always. In this respect there is no difference between weekends and weekdays. The difference is that on weekdays you have no live motorsport, I mean, racing, not testing or set-upping or wind-tunelling or whatever goes 24/7 in F1.
Of course, to Christians weekends are very important because so it is and it is very good.
Here are some opinions of prominent Church figures:
*The NT does not require any observations, at least explicitely.
*St Paul, who preached daily (Acts 19:9), played down the importance of days (Colossians 2:16); he asked the Roman Christians to tolerate differences in worship practices having to do with foods and days (Romans 14:5).
*In the Epistle of Barnabas there is a thought that we are simply unable to keep any day holy (by being pure in heart) because we are imperfect and
until and unless we are made holy after the Second Coming we are unable of rest.
Many writers later followed this moral approach to holy days, interpreting them in terms of moral holiness, not rest.
*Justin Martyr of Rome writes:‘On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read… Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.’ So, to him, it is a day to get together and spend it in a sort of Bible study. It is not about doing nothing, but about doing some very good things. Not a day of rest but of joy.
In Justin’s view, the Sabbath command was an admonition to morality, and Christians, by behaving morally on every day, were in perpetual obedience to the purpose of the Sabbath:
‘We live not after the law, and are not circumcised in the flesh as your forefathers were, and do not observe sabbaths as you do… An eternal and final law — namely, Christ — has been given to us… He is the new law, and the new covenant… The new law requires you to keep perpetual sabbath, and you, because you are idle for one day, suppose you are pious, not discerning why this has been commanded you… If there is any perjured person or a thief among you, let him cease to be so; if any adulterer, let him repent; then he has kept the sweet and true sabbaths of God.’
*Iraenius: ‘The Sabbaths taught that we should continue day by day in God’s service…ministering continually to our faith, and persevering in it, and abstaining from all avarice, and not acquiring or possessing treasures upon earth. Moreover, the Sabbath of God, that is, the kingdom, was, as it were, indicated by created things; in which [kingdom], the man who shall have persevered in serving God shall, in a state of rest, partake of God’s table.’
Now, from my personal experience. I love weekends. But the love is bittersweet. I enjoy rest and knowing that it is purposeful gives me a basis to go on resting. At the same time, I practically learn every weekend that I am uncapable of genuine rest. My mind never rests which threatens the principle of unprofitability of weekends, because the thoughts are not necessarily about God, well, more often not at all about God. Rest is about self-control for me and I always find that I can’t control my thoughts well.
I’d say that rest is good anyway because it is good. But it is not binding. Nothing is binding on Christians, whatever they do they do out of love, devotion, gratefulness etc and not like they are under the law.
But really, I do my homework before that anyway.
This was very helpful.