Tag: rest

The Hinge: Saturday Night Looking at Sunday

.Reading time 12 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

There is a strange hour each week when the noise thins and the future begins to whisper.

Saturday night is not simply the end of leisure. It is not yet obligation. It is a hinge in time — a narrow corridor where the past week and the coming week briefly face each other.

You can feel it if you sit still long enough.

The music softens. The group texts slow. The sky turns darker than it needs to. And somewhere in the mind, a quiet recalculation begins.

Sunday is approaching.

And with it, something much older than us.

The Human Invention of Pause

From the earliest pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, the idea of a structured pause appears. The Sabbath was not merely rest from labor. It was a deliberate interruption of production. A command to stop building, stop harvesting, stop calculating, and stop proving oneself.

That is radical.

In a world where survival once depended on constant vigilance, stopping required trust. The soil would not vanish overnight. The sky would not collapse because the plow rested.

Across centuries and cultures, humans have reinvented this idea in different forms. Markets close. Bells ring. Families gather. Screens dim. A society chooses to breathe.

Modern neuroscience now catches up with what ancient law already knew: chronic activation of the stress response system erodes cognition and health. Cortisol — the body’s alarm hormone — rises not only when chased by predators but when anticipating spreadsheets, performance reviews, and unresolved email threads.

The brain is an imagination machine. It simulates threats to prepare for them. Useful on the savannah. Less useful when the tiger is an inbox.

Saturday night is the moment when simulation often accelerates.

You are not yet working — but you are already working in your mind.

Anticipatory Stress: The Brain Cannot Tell the Difference

Psychologists call it anticipatory stress. The body reacts to what might happen tomorrow as if it is happening now. Heart rate increases. Muscles tense. Sleep fragments.

The nervous system evolved for immediacy. It does not distinguish cleanly between physical threat and abstract evaluation. A quarterly report can activate similar pathways as a rustling in tall grass.

This is not weakness. It is design.

But design needs ritual counterweights.

The ancient answer was Sabbath. The modern answer is less coherent. We substitute entertainment for restoration. We scroll instead of stilling. We stimulate the brain that needs calming.

Saturday night becomes a tug-of-war: one part of us reaching for distraction, another part feeling the gravity of the coming week.

The hinge creaks.

The Threshold State

Anthropologists use the term liminal to describe in-between states. A wedding ceremony marks the passage from single to married. A graduation marks the crossing from student to professional. New Year’s Eve bridges one calendar to another.

Saturday night is a recurring liminal space.

You are neither fully at rest nor fully at labor. You stand between identities: the relaxed self and the responsible self.

Humans behave differently at thresholds. Reflection increases. Meaning becomes sharper. Even architecture acknowledges this — doors, arches, and stairways are rarely neutral. They signal transition.

Saturday night is a psychological doorway.

And doorways invite decision.

The Weekly Vow

What if Sunday were not simply the last day of the weekend, but the renewal of a covenant with one’s calling?

Every profession — consultant, architect, teacher, engineer — demands attention and energy. Over time, purpose erodes under repetition. Fatigue dulls clarity. Cynicism creeps in quietly.

Yet the week resets whether we like it or not.

That reset can be passive or intentional.

A passive reset is dread.
An intentional reset is recommitment.

There is something powerful about treating Sunday as a vow renewal with one’s work and relationships. Not blind enthusiasm, but conscious consent. “I choose this again.”

Even marriages survive on renewal. Even institutions depend on reaffirmed mission statements. Why would the individual psyche be any different?

Saturday night is the drafting room for that vow.

Cyclical Time and Hope

Linear time moves in one direction. But human experience is structured in cycles — days, weeks, seasons, years.

Cycles offer hope because they imply return. After exhaustion comes rest. After winter comes growth. After failure comes another attempt.

The week is a small-scale laboratory of this principle.

Each Monday is disliked because it represents demand. Yet without Monday, there would be no rhythm, no narrative arc, no opportunity for progress.

The week functions like a flywheel. Momentum builds through repetition. Progress compounds not in dramatic leaps but in disciplined recurrence.

Saturday night stands at the edge of that flywheel.

It asks quietly: will you re-engage the mechanism?

If Excel Went to Church

Humor can illuminate truth better than solemnity.

Imagine Excel attending Sunday service.

Excel demands reconciliation. Every column must balance. Every formula must resolve. Circular references are unacceptable.

Grace, by contrast, refuses strict accounting. It credits where no debit exists. It forgives entries that cannot be reconciled.

And yet both pursue order.

The week we are about to enter will require accounting — time, effort, attention. But if the ledger becomes the only measure of worth, the soul shrinks to a spreadsheet.

Sunday, in its best form, interrupts pure calculation.

Saturday night is where the two systems argue gently.

The Physics of Beginning Again

There is something almost physical about the restart of a week. It feels like gravity shifting.

Time itself does not reset — that is a human invention. But human psychology responds powerfully to perceived fresh starts. Behavioral scientists have observed the “fresh start effect,” where temporal landmarks — a new month, a birthday, a Monday — increase goal-oriented behavior.

Why?

Because beginnings carry narrative energy. A blank page invites authorship.

Saturday night is the last paragraph before the blank page.

One can enter Sunday passively, dragged by inevitability. Or actively, with intention.

The difference is subtle but decisive.

The Quiet Telescope

Saturday night allows backward and forward vision simultaneously. You can examine the week behind — successes, failures, unfinished conversations — while glimpsing the week ahead.

This dual vision is rare.

Tuesday afternoon rarely invites existential reflection. Thursday at 2:30 p.m. does not whisper philosophy.

But Saturday night does.

It invites evaluation without immediate pressure.

That is a gift.

Civilizational Design

If entire societies abandon structured pauses, what happens?

Productivity increases temporarily. Output surges. Efficiency becomes idolized. Yet burnout accelerates. Families fragment. Meaning thins.

Rest is not laziness. It is structural reinforcement.

Bridges require expansion joints to absorb stress. Without them, fractures appear. Human systems are no different.

Sunday — whether religiously observed or secularly honored — functions as a societal expansion joint.

Saturday night is the moment when we decide whether we will use it wisely.

The Moral Act of Rest

There is a subtle moral dimension to rest.

To rest is to admit limitation. To acknowledge that you are not the axis upon which the universe turns. To concede that work will resume, but not endlessly.

In hyper-competitive environments, stopping feels irresponsible. Yet unbroken labor erodes judgment. Fatigue distorts decisions. Cynicism spreads.

Rest sharpens competence.

Saturday night whispers: you are finite.

Sunday responds: and that is acceptable.

The Anxiety and the Invitation

Yes, Sunday evening dread exists. The brain anticipates challenge.

But anticipation can be redirected.

Instead of rehearsing worst-case scenarios, one might rehearse readiness. Instead of simulating failure, simulate clarity.

The same imagination that conjures stress can construct resolve.

The hinge does not force direction. It offers choice.

The Strange Gift of Recurrence

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Saturday night is that it will return.

Every seven days, without fail, the hinge reappears. A chance to recalibrate. A recurring opportunity to decide who you will be in the coming week.

Most of life’s grand turning points are rare. Graduation happens once. Retirement happens once. Milestones scatter sparsely across decades.

But this threshold arrives weekly.

The accumulation of small renewals shapes character more reliably than dramatic reinventions.

Standing in the Doorway

Saturday night is not glamorous.

It is not a holiday. It is not a crisis.

It is simply a doorway.

Yet doorways matter.

They orient us. They slow us. They mark passage.

Right now, as the evening deepens, you are standing in one.

Behind you is a completed week.
Ahead of you is an unwritten one.

You can drag the weight of the past forward. Or you can carry forward only the lessons.

You can dread the future. Or you can consent to it.

The hinge does not demand drama. It invites deliberation.

And that is enough.

Tomorrow will come regardless.

The only question Saturday night asks is this:

Will you step through consciously?

Because the week is about to begin again — and the remarkable thing about beginning again is that it never gets old.

The Work That Holds Us Together

.Reading time 8 minutes.

🛠️ The Work That Holds Us Together

I was raised in a blue-collar family. It is the best thing that ever happened to me. My dad was a very hard worker. He was a mechanic (an electro-plater) at Braniff and then would work on cars many nights after he got home. He had calloused hands with grease that never completely disappeared no matter how hard he scrubbed.

I started working as a paper boy at the age of 13-ish. From the paper route, I eventually worked at Holiday Cleaners due to a friendship with the manager I talked to many days on my route. I even chose to get out of school at noon during my senior year to work there on a work program for some who did not plan to go to college. On my paper route, one of my customers asked me to come to work as an office boy at Glidden Paint Company.

I eventually got promoted to be a paint maker in the plant on the night shift. Later, I became the assistant purchasing agent. I did start college during this time but lost a year when I joined the Texas Air National Guard and became a “weekend warrior.” After Linda graduated from UNT and started teaching, I quit to complete my last two years of college. She also had worked non-stop from her younger years until she retired.

I’ve often said that I may not be the smartest person in the world, but I can outwork just about anyone. Like with many in this world, I find sheer enjoyment in working. To create something, to process something, to feel the satisfaction for a job well done is a reward alone.

So, Labor Day is a meaningful holiday for me. This is my salute. AI helped with some history. LFM

I. Labor Day’s Hidden Roots

Labor Day began not as a vacation but a declaration: Workers matter. The earliest advocates didn’t ask for applause—they asked for justice. The 19th-century labor movement arose in a crucible of exploitation: 14-hour workdays, unsafe mills, child labor, and wages that barely fed a family.

In 1882, 10,000 workers in New York marched—not to protest a war, but to demand dignity in the workplace. It wasn’t until the violent Pullman Strike in 1894, when workers shut down rail traffic across the nation and faced federal troops, that Congress finally acted, making Labor Day a national holiday.

But the meaning of the day has always gone deeper than rest. It has been a cry from the ground: Do you see us?

II. The Divine Rhythm of Work and Rest

Long before factories, strikes, and unions, God ordained labor. The first command given to humanity was to “work the ground and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Work was not a punishment—it was a partnership. Adam and Eve were not idle in Eden; they were cultivators.

But even in paradise, there was a rhythm: six days of work, one of rest. God Himself rested—not out of exhaustion, but to show us how sacred rest is.

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” — Mark 2:27

Work is dignified, but so is stopping. Rest is not laziness; it’s an act of faith. It says: I am not God. The world does not depend on my endless output.

III. The Laborers Jesus Saw

Throughout His ministry, Jesus moved among the working class. He did not call religious elites to be His disciples—He called fishermen. He Himself was a carpenter for most of His earthly life. When He told parables, He spoke of vineyard workers, shepherds, sowers, and servants.

And when He spoke to the weary, it was as a worker speaking to workers:

“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” — Matthew 11:28

His kingdom values did not mirror the marketplace. The first were last. The widow’s mite outweighed the rich man’s gift. The one who serves is greatest of all.

What would it mean to bring that vision into our economy today?

IV. The Unfinished Work of Labor Justice

Too often, our systems still devalue the laborer. Some work until their bodies collapse. Others labor invisibly—caring for children, cleaning buildings, stocking shelves—without benefits, praise, or power.

Even in church spaces, we sometimes glorify “calling” only in terms of ministry or leadership. But the Bible does not separate the sacred and the secular that way. Paul writes:

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” — Colossians 3:23

Whether one teaches, welds, drives, prays, or sweeps, it all becomes holy when done with faithfulness.

But faithfulness does not mean accepting injustice. It means confronting it. Like the prophets, we must cry out when wages are withheld (James 5:4), when sabbaths are ignored (Exodus 20:10), when workers are crushed under greed (Amos 8:4–6).

V. Labor Day as Worship

What if Labor Day were not just a long weekend, but an altar? A day to honor those who build bridges, bandage wounds, answer phones, hammer nails, code websites, change diapers, and sweep floors.

What if we lifted up the invisible hands behind visible life?

What if we slowed down enough to give thanks—not just with words, but with wages, policies, and prayers?

What if we remembered that God Himself worked—and called it good?

🕊️ Final Reflection: A Poem for Labor Day

The Hands That Hold the World

Not just the stars or thrones endure,
But hands that scrape, and sew, and cure.
The ones who kneel to fix the gears,
Who mop the floors, who calm the fears.

The mother rocking past her shift,
The courier through rain and drift.
The silent saint behind the glass,
Who rings up joy as hours pass.

The teacher grading after dark,
The welder throwing up a spark.
The unseen hands, the whispered grace,
That hold the world in every place.

So bless the calloused, wrinkled, worn—
The laborers both praised and torn.
For in their work, a truth is shown:
No kingdom stands by kings alone.

And may we build, with justice wide,
A world where labor walks with pride.
Where rest is sacred, wages fair—
And every worker knows we care.

— Labor Day, 2025