First Day - The Secret Of RestSample

Rest Is Purposeful

“Come with Me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” (Mark 6:31)

The seventh day in the Genesis creation story became rest, because God ceased from His work of creation on that day. He spoke good to it, and of it, and He set it aside. Even though Adam and Eve were the pinnacle of His creative work, there was something more that He “caused to become” – something that He wanted them to enter into. He invited our first parents into Him and into His rest.

What is fascinating is that the boundaries of that day are not described in the same terms as the previous six.

“And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.” (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31)

When it comes to the seventh day, there is no “morning and evening.” There doesn’t seem to be any formal conclusion to the day. Could it be that here, at the beginning, the Lord is giving us a huge nudge towards the truth – that the rest enshrined on the seventh day was never meant to remain within the confines of the day, but was intended to be enjoyed every day?

The seventh day of the week for God was, in reality, the first day for Adam and Eve. And on that day, the Creator of the universe called them, not so much to a day, but to a state of being. He not only wanted them to find rest, but to live in rest and learn to live and work from rest.

The Lord wants us to rest on the journey, but one of the keys to this is to become Sabbathcentric. To see rest not as an add-on, but as essential. To bring it into the every day, not relegate it to the occasional. To realise most of all that it’s more than a day, it’s a lifestyle. This rest is not merely physical, rather it is holistic, touching the spirit and the mind. This is a rest that moves from the inside out, impacting our physicality but originating in our spirituality.

The answer to the frantic pace of our lives is the realisation that rest is not a day, an event or a place, but a person – the Lord Himself. When He reigns, rest resides!