Creation of Rest

How seeing the place of rest in creation should shape our daily lives

I’ll sleep when I’m dead. The devil doesn’t rest, why should I. Rest is lazy. Perhaps there is some sort of truth in some of those old phrases. But really, they are all lies as they stand by themselves. They are lies because they speak in disagreement with the truth of God’s design and revelation.

But lies are tempting. They offer us something. In a culture that prizes efficiency, productivity and results, these phrases seem to offer the promise of an elevated life. They promise that if you just destroy yourself in the name of success, you will move up the corporate ladder, you will be seen as valuable by others, you will prove your worth to those around you. You will feel ok surely. Yet, they all fall flat in their delivery on their promises.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead” actually ironically may deliver your own death. Not paying attention to the lack of rest and recovery your body, mind and soul needs will lead to many small deaths in this life and possibly even leading to real physical decay until you do indeed face physical death.

“The devil doesn’t rest, why should I.” I’m not sure where such a heretical statement comes. But even as I prepare a sermon on John 8 where Jesus challenges those who are claiming faith in Jesus as being actually children of the devil because they won’t follow Jesus’ word and accept His words as truth. Why would we aim to define or pattern our work/rest rhythm of life after the devil? Why would we want to look to the devil’s lack of rest as a model for our lives?

“Rest is lazy.” This phrase often comes from a lack of understanding of what rest really is. Rest actually takes work (spoiler alert for the next post). But it’s a veiled understanding of the role of rest in our design to claim it is lazy and in turn not needed in the lives of humans.

These are all false narratives that somehow work their way into our minds in how to live our lives. But we must define our lives and in turn how we live each day around the truth of our creation. The beauty of science is that it actually is bearing witness to the truth of our creation and our need of rest. So let’s consider the case for rest in Genesis 1.

This is by far from original to me. Many have spoken on this. Perhaps one of the most beneficial for me personally have been the BEMA podcast with Marty Solomon, A.J. and Swoboda’s Subversive Sabbath, among others. But I will do my best to summarize much of their thoughts as well as mine.

In Genesis 1, we see the account of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. As we look at the rhythm of creation we notice a few things. It’s always important to notice repeated phrases and ideas in the bible. In Gen. 1 we get a common refrain, “it is good” at the end of each day. This is a declaration as much as a recognition. It’s God declaring the goodness of His creation. It means He created it the way He intended and it reflects a a goodness to it. That’s important for our understanding of the human condition because our experience post-Genesis 3 is not the intention, Genesis 1-2 is. So, in many ways our experience in a world that feels lacking or feels distorted points to the reality that we were meant for so much more. Our bodies crying out for rest is one of those testimonies.

Genesis 1 has another interesting rhythm. It says that “there was evening and morning” each day. This is an interesting phrase for a Western mind, because we think the day starts with sunrise, maybe 6 am. But for the Middle Eastern mind, for the Hebrew mind, the day began at 6 pm. It started at sundown going into the next day. As Marty Solomon notes, this is like God giving a testimony that you were meant to rest before your work. Rest is not the reward of your work. It is not you proving yourself and being worthy of rest. Rest is vital to your human existence.

Going further, Marty makes the point of the audience of Gen. 1. Who would have been the original hearers of this account? It was Moses recounting this creation as given to Him by God to the people of Israel as they are in the wilderness after having come out of slavery in Egypt. Think of the implications for a people whose whole existence for generations was centered on their productivity for the sake of their oppressors. They were only as good as what they could produce each day. They exhausted themselves. Then they are given this account saying your worth is not in your work, but it’s rooted in who you are as a people created in the image of a Holy God. This rest rhythm of Gen. 1 is a testimony to that reality.

But going beyond that, the first full day of human experience is that of the Sabbath, the seventh day. It was a day of solemn rest unto the Lord. As Gen. 1 lays it out, man again is meant to experience a resting in who they are in the Lord before their labors. They are again supposed to experience this particular day as a day set aside for a particular resting from labors and resting in the reality of being cared for by a Holy God. This Sabbath rest is meant to be a testimony that man, created in goodness, has limits and stands in need of God. This isn’t a result of the fall, but as a result of our being creatures. We aren’t God. Rest and Sabbath are reminders that we are creatures and not the Creator, humans but not God.

So important was this reminder of rest that the Sabbath command is the only command found at creation and in the ten commandments. It became an identifier of God’s people in the life of Israel. Rest and Sabbath aren’t just good ideas, just helpful hints for a more productive life from God. Rather, they have been hard-wired into the created order that mankind needs rest to flourish. There is a shalom (wholeness) we are meant to experience from our original design that includes rest and specifically a Sabbath rest.

Part of our struggles with exhaustion, with fatigue, with our bodies breaking down, with our minds swarmed with anxiety is that we are fighting against our design. We are living by the cultural messages to overwork and extend ourselves seeking to live without limits in the name of success and upward mobility. Yet, it’s against our design. It’s not allowing for our basic needs of rest that hard-wired into us. There is a freedom and beauty when we begin to actually rest, to allow ourselves to acknowledge limits and set boundaries to protect intentional rest for our minds, bodies, hearts and soul.