I once went 5 years without being away from work for longer than a 4-day weekend. I spent almost a week outside of the United States during that period accompanying my wife who was lecturing in Latvia, but kept up with work emails and met with several of my readers while in the capital city of Riga. It was a lot of fun, but not a vacation.

My peers in Europe routinely take month-long vacations every year. They don’t answer work emails, they don’t meet with clients, and they don’t maintain a frenetic pace. They rest.

It is ironic that the United States is known as a Christian nation and Europe is known as post-Christian when Americans like me know so little about rest and Europeans are relative experts. It is ironic because rest is a foundational concept of the Bible.

The first pages of Genesis may be the most important of the Bible because they introduce the foundational concepts of Nature, Purpose, Work and Rest.

Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image and likeness. And let them rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the tame animals, over all the earth, and over all the small crawling animals on the earth.”

So God created human beings in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female. God blessed them and said, “Have many children and grow in number. Fill the earth and be its master. Rule over the fish in the sea and over the birds in the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The Everyday Bible: New Century Version (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2005), Genesis 1:26–28.

By the seventh day God finished the work he had been doing, so he rested from all his work. God blessed the seventh day and made it a holy day, because on that day he rested from all the work he had done in creating the world. Genesis 2:2–3.

Nature – All human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in God’s sight. There are no outsiders, foreigners, aliens, or illegals in God’s world because all bear equally the image and likeness of God.

Purpose –God made all human beings to manage the earth as caretakers and stewards. There is no superior race or ruling class. The stratification of human society into leaders with vast influence and wealth and followers living on relative crumbs reflects disorder and sin and such stratification is in direct opposition to the will of God.

Work and Rest– God is a god of work and rest. As persons made in the image and likeness of God, we are made to work AND rest. We value work, but fail to understand, practice, or appreciate rest.

“Keep the Sabbath as a holy day, as the LORD your God has commanded you. You may work and get everything done during six days each week, but the seventh day is a day of rest to honor the LORD your God. On that day, no one may do any work: not you, your son or daughter, your male or female slaves, your ox, your donkey, or any of your animals, or the foreigners living in your cities. That way your servants may rest as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there by his great power and strength. So the LORD your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:12–15).

The day of rest is not time off from work to worship God. The purpose, reason, and intention of the Sabbath is rest as worship of God.

The Patchwork Sunday School Class of Oakhurst Baptist Church has been studying How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation by John Dominic Crossan. Chapter 5 inspired me to write this post.

The topic of rest as worship of God calls for a Part II and Part III and maybe more. I have some ideas for Part II, but need to practice rest a bit more before composing them for you. Here are a few ideas: http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/darwin-was-a-slacker-and-you-should-be-too

To be continued…