Observing the Lord's Day

Today I see two trends with regards to the Lord's Day and both of these are distructive. The first trend is legalism where the laws (in part) of the Old Testament Sabbath are transferred to the Church age and the Lord's Day. The second is secularization of the Lord's Day. Because we are not under the Law but under grace we say that we are free from the Law's demands and we marginalize the Lord's Day to an hour that will not inconvience us.
So how then should we observe the Lord's Day? Mark Buchanan in his book, Rest of God, says we should cease from what is necessary, embrace what gives life and then do what you want.
We must cease from what is necessary. That means we should minimize the work we do around home from general housekeeping to yard work. That does not mean we will do nothing but we will avoid putting off our chores to do on Sunday. It means that we should avoid shopping when possible. That does not mean that if we are taking a drive and see a quaint shop or a road side market that we won't stop and purchase something but we will avoid making Sunday our day for grocery shopping or other types of shopping. We should also avoid job related activities as much as possible. I was a teacher so there was always the temptation to do my marking or lesson planning but that did not give me rest. In the words of Bob Newhart, "Stop it!"
We must embrace what gives life. A priority for Christian families should be to worship together. We need to teach that corporate worship is special and not something that we enter into casually. Remember we teach more by example than by words. We should continue the work of Christ and that is restorative work. We can do that by visiting the sick, the elderly, our families, by spending time with our children in story time, reading, play time. We need to take time to write letters and emails and read inspiring books. And we should not forget to rest.
We need to teach our children to trust God. We can do that in many ways but one way is by stopping work and using our resources to help others.
We are free but to teach children that we are free we must teach them about rules and guidelines. Freedom without rules is chaos and chaos is not freedom. We cannot learn to be free without learning that we must be obedient to rules but the rules are there to help us be free not to bind us. The rules were made for mankind and not mankind for the rules.
If we do this then we can do what we want to do.