Do you go to church if you and/or your family is sick?

[Reformed Covenanter]

It is important to remember that in the covenant of grace, the Lord accepts the will for the deed. Those who wish to attend public worship, but cannot do so owing to ill health have their desires to be in attendance accepted by God as if they were actually there when they cannot be there in person owing to a providential hindrance such as illness.

 

[Intrepiditate In Proelium]

But isn't sickness a case of being "providentially hindered"? We are commanded (Gal.6.10 and elsewhere) to love our neighbors as ourselves and do good unto all men "especially unto them, which are of the household of faith" which includes reasonably avoiding the jeopardizing of their health (which I believe is what is being communicated in #26 above). We are not commanded to attend public worship every Lord's Day.

Sabbathkeeping is much more than Private and Public Worship. As you alluded to, visiting the sick and those unable to attend worship can be part of keeping the Sabbath. This was recently discussed in this thread https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/are-works-of-mercy-an-exception-or-command.111024/ which I commend to you and believe you will find much agreement with.

Absolutely, I would just add the nuance that not every sickness is equal in its providential hinderance(i.e. cold is not the flu). This is why in one of my above posts I talked about the sick doing what they could since the church is currently falling short of its ministry to the sick. I don’t think being sick on the Sabbath is treated correctly in our day, since it leads to a complete exclusion from the Local body(sometimes for multiple weeks). So if people get sick and cant attend, a couple people(especially ministers) should visit said people and minister to them.

I am not saying that if you have a cold and come to church that you should just show up and lick people to get them sick(there is discernment).

Also, for your claim that we are not commanded to attend public worship every Lord’s Day, I would just note that we are commanded not to forsake the assembling together of ourselves which would command us to attend every Lord’s Day worship unless providential hindered(some sicknesses fall here and some don’t; again cold is not flu).

 

[Andrew35]

We spent more weeks home than I'd care to admit this winter. Between recurring strep infections, and stomach bugs, it was a rough winter for us with all the kids.

We got hammered with sicknesses--and bad ones--after following the pandemic. Much worse than a normal year.

I'm currently going with the theory that being locked down/masked/basically getting almost no sicknesses whatsoever (our country was quite strict on controlling covid) made our immune systems flabby and out of shape. Nothing else accounts to my mind for how many bad colds we got following our reintegration into society.

 

[MyCrows]

We got hammered with sicknesses--and bad ones--after following the pandemic. Much worse than a normal year.

I'm currently going with the theory that being locked down/masked/basically getting almost no sicknesses whatsoever (our country was quite strict on controlling covid) made our immune systems flabby and out of shape. Nothing else accounts to my mind for how many bad colds we got following our reintegration into society.