Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 127 · May 7
The Seventh Day
“And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”
The seventh day is the only day in the creation account that has no evening.
Six times the account has closed in the same way: "And the evening and the morning were the third day," and then the fourth, and the fifth. When the seventh day comes, that pattern stops, and the day is left open.
You have tried to rest, and you have not been very good at it. The afternoon that was meant to stay empty had filled up by half past two. The hour you protected went to a screen, with a low hum of guilt underneath. Rest turns into one more thing you are supposed to do well, and that is the one thing rest can never be.
Here is what the text says happened: "And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." God blessed a day. Up to this point in Genesis, His blessing has fallen on living things: first the creatures of the sea and the birds, and then the man and the woman. Here it lands on a piece of time.
When the commandment about the Sabbath comes later, the reason it gives is this page of Genesis, and tiredness is never mentioned: "For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it." The letter to the Hebrews says that God's rest is still open to His people: "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." It also explains what that rest is: "For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his."
Father, we have turned rest into work, and then failed at it, and You know how our afternoons go. Teach us to stop while things are still unfinished, because Your work was finished and ours never will be. Bless the hours we give back to You, as You blessed that first seventh day. Take away our fear that the week will fall apart if we are still, and bring us into Your rest. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 127 is Light and Understanding (Psalm 119:130).