Gravity of Grace Episode 3: God Established Rest

To watch the podcast version, please click here.

How would you describe the importance of rest for human health? As someone who suffers from sleep apnea, I can testify that an insufficient quality and/or quantity of rest will make life miserable!

But how about you? Have circumstances outside your control ever robbed you of the chance to rest? How did that make you feel? I know. Stupid question! It made you feel great! NOT!!!

The painful truth is that all of us have experienced times in life when, no matter how hard we tried or wished, the restless nights and weary days left us longing for rest.

Dear friends, I must admit that in my life, one of the most nerve-racking things that I have dealt with is constantly feeling the pressure to be somewhere doing something. This hit hard when I returned to college later in life and was working sometimes up to 60 hours per week at Amazon, doing my college studies, and being a single parent all at the same time.

Yes. The vast majority of the situation I just described came from a series of choices in my life that snowballed into something quite crushing. Somewhere I had never intended to be and something that I, quite frankly, just tried to survive.

Corrie Ten Boom, author of The Hiding Place, has famously stated, “If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy.” And I have found out the truth of her words several times in my life as I allowed a slipping into excessive busyness to occur in my schedule.

And then, as if roused from a vivid dream by the chirping of birds outside my window, I come to my senses and see that I have neglected God’s wisdom, substituting constant activity for real productivity. I have discovered that listening to God’s wisdom and allowing myself time to rest actually makes me more productive.

I, like many others, have discovered the hard way that God is smarter than I am and that I would do well to listen to His wisdom. So, shall we take a moment and explore a small sampling of that wisdom together? Come, let’s see what we can glean from the opening chapters of Genesis about rest.

In Genesis 2:1-3, we find two concepts that I find remarkably interesting and hope-inspiring. Those concepts being: one, God rested from His creative work, and two, God made a day holy. However, in my life, this impactful concept of rest has often been sadly lacking. Upon my conversion to Christianity in 1991, these concepts became a major factor in my newfound perspective and thus a large part of my newfound joy.

But as I became more familiar with Scripture, I fell into the mental trap of being too nonchalant with many of the things recorded in the Bible. And with that mentality of casual familiarity, this passage’s concepts, among others, did not influence me as they could have. My casual treatment of Scripture mentality short-changed me and robbed me of a deeper fulfillment.

So, dear friends, let me ask a question: How do you imagine the Earth before Noah’s Ark? Well, that opens up a large window, right? So, shall we narrow the focus? How do you imagine the Earth prior to Adam and Eve falling into sin?

What would this planet have looked like the day that God got done with His creative works?

Now that is a question that makes me stop and ponder.

With the fall, the rise of evil, the flood of Noah’s day, the realm of Nimrod, the Tower of Babel event, the spread of humanity, the rise and fall of many nations, and all the natural and man-made disasters across history, I admit, my mind gets taxed beyond my abilities. Left on my own without help from those who are more educated in these matters, I cannot put together a mental picture of the world Adam and Eve knew before sin.

And in the year immediately after my newly found faith in Christ, I was most assuredly not ready to tackle such issues. I mean, at that time of my life, I could not even easily find biblical places like Dan, Capernaum, Nazareth, and the Decapolis on a map. And all of those are places from the Gospels! I really did not stand a chance of getting my mind around the places and lands spoken of which came earlier in the biblical narrative.

Thankfully, it was only a few years from my conversion to Christ before I ran across the videos that Kent Hovind was making about creationism. And in watching these video presentations, I allowed the wonder of what God had done to resonate in my mind again. The beauty of the original work of art shone into my life again, bringing with it a revived appreciation for the concept of taking a day of rest. I also found creationist material from individuals like Ken Ham, Kurt Wise, Steve Austin, and others, which expanded and improved my knowledge.

And with the increase in my understanding of the past, the beauty of the original creation and God’s work came alive in my awareness. I was not only seeing the beauty that remained but was imagining the work of art for what it was prior to being tainted and damaged.

I saw not only the beauty of God’s creative work but also the masterpiece of literature that is the Bible. And in this, I discovered that although the Bible is not a science book, history book, or geography book, when the Bible speaks of these subjects, it is always correct.

I also found renewed confidence in my trust of the Biblical narrative, as the encouraging words from others were helping me to appreciate the spectacular things that were all around me.

Now I find comforting hope in the idea of a day of rest. A day set aside to refocus our lives. One day to clear the clutter from our minds and allow the light, hope, healing, and belonging to regain their proper place in our lives. A day to abide in the original work of art, allowing the beauty of that which was to bring blessings to my current situation.

Shall we look at Genesis chapter 1 and allow a particularly peculiar word repetition to sink into our skulls and redirect our reasoning? I want to focus on the wording “evening and morning” and allow the text to speak to me. Please join me and hear what is being said:

Evening and Morning

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Genesis 1:5b.

And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. Genesis 1:8.

And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. Genesis 1:13.

And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. Genesis 1:19.

And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. Genesis 1:23.

And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 1:31b.

So, God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. Genesis 2:3.

English Standard Version

Did you catch the sequence of words that denote each day? Evening and morning—not morning and evening! Completely backwards to how I had thought about the daily cycle from my upbringing.

Dear friends, I must confess that this recently struck me profoundly. And as I contemplated this, the distinction affected me greatly because it points to God’s measurement of a day and teaches us the concept of resting first so we are ready for the day ahead.

Such a simple difference with a massive influence. And again, I find encouragement in the point where we enter a cycle with which we are so familiar. We do not need to earn the right to rest; instead, we should rest to be ready to take care of the things that are happening in our lives. God rested from His creative work and wanted His children to rest from our work as well.

So, we start each working day by resting up during the overnight hours and being ready to be productive. And then we have a day on which we do no normal work. God, in His wisdom and loving kindness, set aside a day to be separate from all other days. One day each week to rest from our normal work. God had provided a system of rest and activity which guides us toward mental and emotional health.

This gives me great hope. If God has put this much into just the first week of creation, just imagine what the Lord has put into our eternal home with Him. I find tremendous encouragement in these thoughts. These marvelous thoughts provoke an anticipation within me of being with Him eternally.

What comforting concepts, concepts which supply me with awe and expectation!

God is good and does good things. And God set things in an order which blesses us if we will only listen to Him and avoid the spaces of darkness, despair, pain, and isolation.

My studies of the New Testament have served to re-enforce my encouragement about concepts like a day of rest.

As the greatest teacher of all time, Jesus Christ, taught us in Mark 2:27-28 (ESV), “And he (Jesus) said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”

And because of verses like these, I quickly understood a very important thing after I began my Bible reading journey with the Gospels. I comprehended that God had provided a day of rest for humanity and that King Jesus was Lord of that day of rest.

So, my friends, can I pose a few questions for us to ponder?

What has been your understanding of a day of rest?

How have you felt about practicing this spiritual discipline?

And what barriers have you experienced in attempting to step away from the constant activity of our society?

Yeah, these questions most likely cannot get answered quickly. And to be completely honest, inquiries like these should sit with us for a while and allow us to ponder them amid all of our various activities.

After all, I can testify that when I allow an idea time to percolate in my mind, the impact it can have grows over time, like allowing tea to steep longer–the strength grows the longer it steeps.

Cheerio, splendid chaps! (in a British accent)

Yeah, that’s excellent tea!

Sorry. I could not, or rather would not, resist the urge for a corny joke. But shall we return to the subject at hand?

Action Step: Think about, grapple with, and pray about how God incorporated rest into our daily and weekly schedule at the beginning.

Then embrace the concept of rest in your life so that you do not burn out from excessive busyness. Find some way of increasing your rest so that your working days will be more productive and more satisfying. Make sure you take a day where you do no normal work and allow yourself to reset, recharge, and relax in the love and grace of God.

Thank you for joining us on the Gravity of Grace podcast. I am Stephen C. Meade; I am your friend, and you can reach me at Stephen@marblesuspendedinspace.com.

And I would love to hear from you. Until next time, goodbye and God bless!

If you would like to watch the podcast version, please click here.