The first creation myth in Genesis ends strangely with God’s rest. Of course, in the stories that follow, the Sabbath and observance of the Sabbath often play major roles, and it’s unsurprising that the authors and preservers of Genesis would want to introduce the origins of the Sabbath at the outset. Yet it is odd to think of God resting.

We rest when we are tired. Was God tired by his labor of creating? Conventional theology says “no.” Isaiah says of God that “[h]e will not grow tired or weary¹.” If God was not tired, in what sense did he rest? What does it mean to rest without being tired?

One clue we have is God’s response to his own creation. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” The goodness of his own work was a source of satisfaction to him. He took some time to appreciate it. Another clue we have is that he “had finished the work he had been doing.” He stopped working. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day seemed to take this as meaning that God was still resting², having finished creation and having nothing more to do. But clearly, God continued to interact with humans and initiate and respond to events in history. Yet there is certainly a sense in which God does indeed continue to rest. He often lets things happen. I’ve written before about how a defining characteristic of love is patience, a willingness to let things happen without trying to manipulate them toward a desired outcome. Here we see God’s patience at the very beginning. Having created everything good and charged the man and woman with taking care of what he has made, he waits to see what will happen. He entrusts his good creation to them (or, at least, the earth and everything in it).

So rest requires faith. To really rest, I must believe that things will turn out all right even if I’m not working to control the outcomes. This is why the Sabbath was so central to Jewish religious observance. To take a day off when there is always so much to be done seems like an invitation to catastrophe. Our minds fill up with what-if scenarios, and we imagine that we surely must do something to keep bad things from happening. Yet God commanded his people to rest even during harvest, even when resting could mean loss. Underneath his command is this subtext: “Trust me. You will have enough. Everything will be okay.” This same subtext underlies other commands, such as the law requiring harvesters to leave grain for the gleaners and exhortations to practice generosity and hospitality. For we are prone to worry about the future and think that only our own work can prevent something bad from happening. Our natural tendency is to rest only when we are too exhausted to keep working. Such rest, however, is barely recuperative and does not provide the peace and contentment we all crave. Without faith we can never enter God’s rest³.

1. Isaiah 40:28 ↩︎
2. Context suggests that the religious leaders were upset at Jesus for violating the Sabbath, not only by doing the work of healing, but by telling the healed man to carry his mat. Jesus responds by saying that his Father is continually at work, so he himself is always working too. John 5:16-18. It may be a bit of a stretch to say that they thought of God as resting since creation, but they certainly taught that he was distant and unapproachable, not much involved in humans’ lives except as a judge of their failings. Similar perceptions are common today. ↩︎
3. Hebrews 3:7-4:11. ↩︎