I’m Ken Jones, and this is A Classic State of Mind,
With A Word About … A Day of Rest.
Here on KVIP the past few Sunday mornings, I’ve talked about the days I mention in my latest book, “If I Should Die Before I Live, (sorting out what matters most.) The seven most significant days I believe any of us can navigate:
Someday, for Dreaming.
Any Day, for Waiting.
Every Day, for Living.
Yesterday, for Remembering.
Today, for Now.
Tomorrow, for sure?
And this morning, that seventh day: The one we call ‘A Day of Rest’.
If Tomorrow is the only day Jesus said we shouldn’t worry about, A Day of Rest represents the only day God said we should never forget. “Remember the Sabbath …” said The Only God There is, in His Book.
A Day of Rest stands unique from all the other days, in that it is the only day common to both God and the man He created.
None of the other days touch God the way they touch me. For example, God doesn’t view Someday the way I do. (Now that I think about it, God doesn’t view a lot of things the way I do. But I digress.)
God isn’t affected by Somedays. He doesn’t have a dream about what may happen, Someday, in His head, the way I do. He never wonders about a Someday that can seem so far off, as I do.
And He’s never waiting around for something to come along or happen, Any Day (now) the way I do, either. He’s never bored with the monotony of Every Day life. And God — great and awesome as He is — can’t remember all the past sins and failures in my Yesterday, the way I do. Unlike me, when He forgives, He truly forgets about my Yesterday, burying my failures in that great sea of His forgetfulness and grace.
While Today, for me, is twenty-four hours long, Today for the Great I Am is eternally… now. It’s always ‘now’ for God, never part of some Today, stuck between my Yesterdays and my Tomorrows.
And, what about Tomorrow? God never worries about what He already knows, and He already knows… everything. So God never worries. Whatever Tomorrow may contain (if it contains anything at all,) He’s got it covered. So, He instructs in His Book that I spend no time worrying about Tomorrow.
But A Day of Rest? The God of All the Universe had a Day of Rest, and He specifically instructed in His Book that I should have one, too.
When the God of All Time decided to wind the ‘clock of days,’ He declared a beginning to it all. “And there was evening, and there was morning. The first day,” says The Book. And after the first day, there came a second, and third and another and another and another until God — the God of All Strength, Might, and Power — had evidently had enough. The Bible says that after He completed six full days of creating stuff like stars and fish and light and everything else that was, or ever would be created, He rested. He took a day off. He kicked back, He did. Looked at all He had made in the previous six days, and said, “This is good. It’s all … very good.”
Yes, God looked at what went on in His six days of incredible creativity and noted that those were ‘good days.’ But then, he marked that seventh day as ‘holy.’ Think about it. God had six ‘good’ days in a row, before he declared, not a “good” day, but a holy day. (And, everybody knows there’s a big difference between a good day and a holy day.)
Years later, as Moses met God on Mount Sinai, God brought up that Day of Rest, again. “Remember the Sabbath,” said God. And, He wrote it down in stone for Moses, and all of God’s children to read. No one would have an excuse for forgetting: Remember the Sabbath, because God said it was a holy day.
For certain, our Day of Rest needs to includes physical, mental, emotional and spiritual renewal. Human beings need respite from physical labor in order to allow opportunity for the worship of the God of All Creation. Body, soul, and spirit are restored, as we worship Him.
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