Day Seven - The First "Holiday"

Gen, 2:1-3 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work He that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation.

This day of rest can easily be misunderstood. It certainly isn't the case that God needed to rest because He was weary. He does not tire nor is His power ever exhausted. If we simply take the text on its face, we see no mention of God being tired or needing the restful seventh day to recuperate. So, if the reason was not that God needed rest, what was the reason?

God doesn't leave us wondering. The passage tells us that God "blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work that He had done in creation." The reason for the seventh day rest period was so that a day could be set aside as "blessed" by God Himself, and as we see later (i.e. Exodus 20:8) set aside for men to reflect on and worship God the Creator of all. It was a day that God defined from the very start as a "holy" day. Those two words together form a combination that we now speak as one word, the word "holiday." It should give us pause to understand that what we often think of as days made for us to engage in often questionable recreational pursuits were designed instead to be days of remembrance, reflection, and reverence of the very One who gives us all that we have to enjoy in the first place. I hope that the next time a "holiday" comes around, you will try at least in some way to make it a "holy" day as well.

Your joyfully loquacious believer,
LEE