This year at church we are studying the Old Testament. As I was reading Genesis chapter 2 this morning, verses 2 and 3 jumped out at me:
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
I always knew that the Creation story ended with God resting on the seventh day, but what stood out to me today was that it was His day of rest that God blessed and sanctified. He had all those days of productivity, but which day did He bless and sanctify? His day of rest. Do you think it’s possible that God actually values rest too—not just productivity?
I don’t know about you, but I often fall into the trap of “hustling for my worthiness” (Brene Brown quote) and believing that if I’m not being productive then I’m doing something wrong and God is not pleased with me. But God Himself took the time to rest. He worked hard and accomplished some pretty important things first, but then He rested. And He blessed and sanctified that day of rest. This seems really significant to me. I want to remember to value my days of rest as much as my days of productivity—to intentionally and deliberately plan times of rest into my life as well as times of productivity—and I think in the Creation story God gives me permission to do so.
Another thing I thought about as I was pondering these verses is what had to be true in order for God to truly rest on the seventh day. First, God had to be confident that the work He had done was good and sufficient. He had to be content with the effort that He had put in. He couldn’t be worrying about whether He had really done enough or if His work was good enough.
Second, God had to be clear on what was His responsibility and what wasn’t. I think something a lot of us might do at that point if we were God is start worrying about whether our kids were going to make the right choices while on earth and be able to come back to us. What if they didn’t make good choices? What if they didn’t repent?
God had to be clear that His responsibility was to provide an earth, physical bodies, and a Savior for us. Our job was to use our agency to choose what we wanted to do with those gifts and who we wanted to become. God fulfilled His commitments to us, and He didn’t worry about things outside of His scope of responsibility and control, like what choices we would make with the agency He had given us.
Fulfilling His commitment to us, recognizing that His efforts were good and sufficient, and not worrying about things that were outside of His control and responsibility are what allowed God to truly rest on the seventh day. And He believed that day of rest was important enough to bless and sanctify it. These are some of the important lessons I learned from the Creation story in Genesis this morning.
