Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy

I had an amazing, peaceful, spiritually uplifting experience while completing this challenge last Sunday. Growing up, my parents were very strict on what we could or could not do on Sunday. We never turned the TV on, cleaned our house, did homework, listened to music, or shopped at the store. When I was younger, I had a hard time understanding why my parents would require something that hard from me, but as I grew up, I began to become very grateful for the requirements set.
Unfortunately, as soon as I moved out, I began to slacken on my Sunday worship. For the first time I was so swamped with homework that I didn’t know how I could possibly finish without working on it on Sunday. Also, my roommates all love watching Netflix, listening to music, and throwing parties on Sunday. Our walls are thin, which made it nearly impossible to separate myself form the world.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I began robbing banks on Sunday or anything like that, but it just became easier to go along with the crowd, rather than constantly tell my roommates to remember that it was Sunday. I often did homework on Sunday, and would sometimes watch movies that I knew wouldn’t be very bad. Certainly a G or PG rated movie should be okay on Sunday right? Fortunately, I wasn’t the only roommate who was upset by this policy, and last Sunday we all contributed to a more uplifting atmosphere.
It was one of the most peaceful, uplifting days of my life. I spent all day studying my scriptures, reading my patriarchal blessing, writing letters to missionaries, playing the piano, and writing in my journal. It was so relaxing to put away all of my homework and worries and focus on what really matters. Believe me, it was hard! I had a ten page paper due on Tuesday and all I wanted was to work on it because so much depends on that paper! I believe that taking a day off from writing it helped me write a better paper in a shorter amount of time. I had the opportunity to go to a missionary fireside, and had a lot of important questions answered that had been really bothering me for a long time. I was so in tune with the spirit and I benefitted from acting upon it.
As it turns out, my parents were right! Keeping the Sabbath day holy will make such a difference in your life and Heavenly Father will bless you because of your obedience. From now on, I am going to try harder to finish all of my homework before Sunday, and to refrain from media and TV. I hope that if I ever get tempted to do otherwise that I will be able to remember the amazing experience I had last week. Heavenly Father blesses us when we keep his commandments.