Uncovering The Wisdom Of The ScripturesSample

The Holiness of Time

Scripture: Genesis 1:1—2:4

The most prominent feature of Genesis 1 is its rhythmic structure. Six times, a segment of Creation work is introduced with the phrase “God spoke,” which is followed by the phrase “It was evening, it was morning” and the number of the day, one through six. 

But the seventh day is treated very differently. Instead of the number being the concluding phrase, it’s in the introduction: “By the seventh day . . .” (2:2). The number seven is then repeated twice. So “seventh” is used three times, giving this seventh day an emphasis far beyond that of the first six. 

We were created to live in the rhythms of Creation. Seven days repeated in a sequence of four weeks places us in the rhythm of the twenty-eight-day phases of the moon circling the Earth. This lunar rhythm is repeated twelve times in the annual sweep of the Earth and moon around the sun. These large, encompassing rhythms call forth regularities of spring births, summer growth, autumn harvest, and winter sleep. In Creation we are immersed in rhythms. 

We’re also composed of rhythms. Physiologically, we live out rhythms of pulse and breath. Our hearts beat steadily, circulating blood through our bodies in impulses of sixty or eighty or a hundred times a minute. Our lungs expand and contract, pushing oxygen through our bodies. This is the nature of the creation of which we are a part. We’re embedded in time, but time is also embedded in us.

The understanding and honoring of time is fundamental to the realization of who we are and how we live. Violations of sacred time become desecrations of our most intimate relationships with God and one another. Hours and days, weeks and months and years are the very stuff of holiness. 

When time is desecrated, life is desecrated. The most conspicuous evidences of this desecration are hurry and procrastination. Hurry turns away from the gift of time in a compulsive grasping for abstractions that it can possess and control. Procrastination is distracted from the gift of time in a lazy inattentiveness to the life of obedience and adoration by which we enter the “fullness of time.” Both hurried grasping and procrastinating inattention keep us from honoring the holiness of time.

Are you more often tempted to hurry or to procrastinate? Why? How does this keep you from honoring the holiness of time on a practical level?

For More Insights

Visit MessageBible.com/devotionals for more insights from The Message Devotional Bible. Many of the notes and reflections found in this special edition are adapted from the works of Eugene H. Peterson with permission. “The Holiness of Time” is adapted from Christ Plays in 10,000 Places.