WHY WEDNESDAYS?

God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.

GENESIS 1:16-17 (NRSV)

When I was in active ministry, I was looking for a way to keep in touch with my parishioners during the week. I saw a few of them when I visited the homebound or called on those who were hospitalized or in nursing homes. But I wanted to connect with those who, unless they stopped by the church for some reason, didn’t hear from me other than on Sunday.

So I began writing a weekly electronic newsletter. It was far from an original idea. Many other pastors had been doing the same thing long before me. The key element in the newsletter was an inspirational message from me, their pastor, primarily a glimpse ahead into the upcoming scripture lessons for the following Sunday. I wanted folks to start thinking and reflecting about what they would hear.

I settled on Wednesday as the best day to publish. It was, after all, the middle of the week, when most folks begin thinking about, and making their plans for the weekend. I decided on a catchy title that would hopefully grab their attention. I love alliteration, so I decided to call it, “Wednesday’s Word.”

The electronic newsletter became a staple of my time at the congregation I served, and continues to this day, more than a decade after my time there.

When I moved into the office of Bishop, I wanted to continue the practice. But I decided to write and publish earlier in the week to allow people to know my schedule and whatever else I felt they should be aware of. Again, the alliterative title I chose was “Monday Musings.”

The musings ended with the end of my term in 2020, but in what may be seen by some as an act of vanity, I was able to archive them to a page on this website, where they still reside until who knows when.

During my Episcopal interim, the written communication evolved into a video, not wanting to duplicate past practices. I did, however, revert to Wednesday as the day to broadcast. Some of those can also be found elsewhere on this website on the page A Look Ahead.

A few weeks ago I resumed blogging on a more regular basis and, feeling that I needed consistency, determined once again that Wednesday, my favorite day of the week, was the best day to post my various and sundry thoughts.

There’s something about Wednesday that I find appealing, other than the explanations I mentioned earlier. The children’s book writer, A.A. Milne, put these words into the mouth of his popular bear, Winnie-the-Pooh:

“On Wednesday, when the sky is blue,
and I have nothing else to do,
I sometimes wonder if it’s true
That who is what and what is who.”

Winnie-the-Pooh

The comedian George Carlin once quipped that, “If all our national holidays were observed on Wednesdays, we could wind up with nine-day weekends.”

But on a more serious note, in scripture, Wednesday is the “fourth day,” the day in which God created the sun, moon, and stars (see the opening citation above).

It was from that point that God began creating “living creatures,” the last of which, of course, was humankind.

In somewhat the same sense, I’ve made Wednesday my “Creation Day.” Though ideas are floating around in my mind at all times, it is on Wednesday that they seem to come to semblance of order.

In James Weldon Johnson’s poetic version of the creation, he doesn’t specify a day, but he imagines the story as told in the voice of a black preacher’s sermon.

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good! ¹

“The Creation”
James Weldon Johnson

This poem has fascinated me since I first read it in high school. Many years later, I memorized it and performed it for a special program at the church where I was a member. Needless to say, it got people’s attention because they saw a side of me never before seen. And also needless to say, have never seen since. It was one of those moments that can only be described as “Holy Spirit inspired.”

So this is my rambling reasoning for why I blog on Wednesday. If you are still reading at this point, congratulations! This is one of those days that I had no idea what to write about, and I did what many writing instructors suggest – sit down and stare at a blank piece of paper until something comes to mind. This was it.

And hopefully, as God said after seeing all that he had made, it is good.

1. Johnson, James Weldon. “The Creation.” God’s Trombones. (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, reprint of the 1969 ed. New York: Viking Press, pp. 17-18) ↩︎