A Refreshing Moment

Did God really need to rest on the seventh day?  Was He truly worn out, beat-to-the-bone weary, after six days of creating all that is and ever will be?  Had He come to the place of such exhaustion that thinking about what was next was impossible?  Did He declare a day of rest because He was worn out and all His resources depleted?  Of course, not! As humans we know about exhaustion, weariness, and being empty of strength, but this human condition is not anything experienced or known by God unless, of course, we acknowledge that He experienced it through Jesus as He walked and worked and grew weary among us.

 

There might be some room to differ from the idea that God never grows weary as we read the 17th verse of the 31st chapter of Exodus when it says, "It (Sabbath) is a sign between Me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed."  What about this image of God in need of being refreshed?  Does not such an admission of need imply weariness and exhaustion?  Not necessarily.  So much work is done today in the market place that is impossible to see at the end of the day.  It is not like the farmer who starts breaking land open to plant and at the end of the day he is bone tired, but can look back at the field of fresh plowed dirt and be refreshed and renewed by what he sees has been accomplished.  Not only is there a sense of completion, but there is also participation in something that is purposeful. 

 

Such a moment at the end of the row at the end of the day is indeed a moment of being refreshed for what is still ahead.  It is an image that comes to mind as this verse from Exodus becomes fodder for meditation.  Like all our images, it is not perfect.  It has it flaws, but it surely points us to the way God might pause for a moment in the midst of what He is about and say with a sense of accomplishment and purpose, "It is good."