Today’s devotion is from “The Weekly Rest Project,” published by Zondervan.
Our culture places a lot of emphasis on working hard, earning your place, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but a close reading of the Bible reveals a very different message. God doesn’t love you because you work harder than anyone else. You can’t earn your place in heaven through good works. And God certainly doesn’t determine your value by your use of your bootstraps — quite the opposite. After all, the Bible isn’t full of stories of independent go-getters who won accolades all on their own by working around the clock. No, the stories are of people who leaned on God to achieve great things by saying yes to Him and following His path, which includes good work, but also always includes rest. The Sabbath was the first day specifically set aside for something established by God. More holy days and holidays and feasts would come later, but the Sabbath has been with us since creation. It is one of God’s first gifts to us, a sacred time to give our bodies and minds a chance to recharge and anchor our weeks in rest and communion with Him. Resting regularly isn’t being lazy and doesn’t mean that we are shirking our responsibilities. It is simply accepting God’s generous gift. Building our lives around weekly rest is the first step in accepting the rhythm of life God laid out for us at the beginning, and it only brings us closer to Him.
On the seventh day — with the canvas of the cosmos completed — God paused from His labor and rested. Thus, God blessed day seven and made it special — an open time for pause and restoration, a sacred zone of Sabbath-keeping. [Genesis 2:2-3]
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