Spirituality Column #758

May 24, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The ‘Rest’ of the Story

By Bob Walters

“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.  By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing, so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.  Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” Genesis 2:1-3 KJV

My curiosity for the "Why?" of Creation is far more engaged than my need to know "How?"  God can do anything He wants, so there's the "How."  Bit by bit, human science figures it out. Science is God's glorious and teasing dance of hide and seek.

But what science will never answer, and is not equipped to answer, is the profound question of "Why did God want Creation?"  Much modern science starts with the proposition that God doesn't exist, so "Why God did this" or Why God wanted that" become conveniently moot, vacant points that open the way for humans to conceive and assign their own multiple truths and vault their own existence to the primacy of all creation.  Purpose disappears.  Who needs God in order for "me" to be in charge?

It takes the pressure off human truth when God's righteousness is not a factor.  I am free to be and do whatever I want ... cuz ... that's my truth.  See how that works?

Jokes aside, I think the "Why?" question of God's activity is the easiest and most obvious and best explained answer in all theology: God created the Cosmos for His glory and created man in His own image to both recognize and share that glory.

God the Father-Son-Spirit Trinity describes the eternal, infinite, uncreated, divine, and supreme relationship - and proper reckoning - behind the statement, "God is love."  It's this relationship we need first to see in God, not His engineering schematic.

But we have to admit ... wow ... that engineering schematic must really be something.  God's creativity, accomplishment, purpose, and truth are all rolled up and shot out of a cosmic canon for the "six days" of the Bible's account of creation.  Then ... God rests.  God assess His Creation of water, light, sky, land, vegetation, fish, fowl, beast, and finally man in His own image and judges His Creation all "very good."

Then He takes a breather.  But is that what really happened, a breather?  God needed a break?  We humans think in terms of work, weariness, and rest because we, unlike God, get tired.  God on the other hand, is not resting out of weariness.  He rested because His work was complete, perfect, effective, absolute, and as my NIV Study Bible notes, "nothing formless or empty remained."  Mission accomplished.

Oh yeah ... Satan, sin, the fall, faithlessness, the chaos of nations and humanity ... what was perfect and holy about all that?  Not much, but God's "rest' is a reminder.

More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), in studying scripture's Creation story for E91's Mustard Seed Bible study he teaches, noticed that only the seventh day, God's day of rest - the Sabbath - is mentioned in God's covenant and commandments.  Why is that?