For most people, life tends to revolve around work. Instead of life driving labor we live in a way where labor drives life. We start and focus each morning on work, and it determines and drives our day. We put work ahead of our marriages and families and don’t take nearly enough time to cultivate deeper more meaningful relationships. We don’t rest, are sleep deprived, and as a result of constantly being on the go, eat poorly, don’t exercise or care for our bodies, and getting proper rest is at the bottom of our list. At the end of an exhausting day, we stumble into our beds to get a few hours of sleep and are never fully rested. In addition, we blow off the Sabbath.

This is not how God designed us to live. If I were to ask you without looking to review the narrative of creation week, what would your recollection of Genesis 1 and 2 be? Most would say there was day and then night and the first day. They would repeat that for six days perhaps remembering what took place on what day and then recall that God rested on the seventh day. But that’s not what it says!  As each day of creation unfolds God’s order starts from rest and then moves to work and activity. It literally says in verse five of Genesis 1 and there was evening and there was morning the first day.

Notice the order, evening is mentioned first then morning. This pattern continues through day six, and on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. By the way, God didn’t rest because He was tired. But He did create a rhythm for us to follow. God starts from the principle and practice of rest, not work. From a rested state He then moves toward work and activity. We’ve gotten it backwards; we work to exhaustion and rest is an afterthought. We listen to those who have “made their fortunes” tell us sleep is for sissy’s and the weak. After all, if we are going to get ahead in this world, we gotta “strike while the iron is hot.”

Nonsense! God starts from a position of rest and moves toward work not the other way around. Rest and a willingness to rest demonstrates trust and dependence on Him. It is when we rest and aren’t obsessed with productivity and constantly producing something that we are able to truly abide in Him, and live an abundant life, not a life bent on pursuing abundance. Evening and Sabbath is a time associated with rest, not activity or productivity. Evening then moves toward day when we are active and do our work. A tired and exhausted people, results in burn out and merely subsisting rather than thriving. Working from a position of rest results in better and more meaningful work, done with diligence and excellence as unto the Lord. Remember the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

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