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.

And 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 2:2 NIV
    
God blessed (spoke good of) the seventh day,
set it apart as His own, and hallowed it,
because on it God rested from all His work
which He had created and done.
Genesis 2:2 Amplified Bible
   
God's blessing was given to the fish and fowl.
To the man and the woman was given a blessing.

In the third and last blessing,
God blessed the day of His own rest.
The one day He set apart for Himself and
the only day on which He bestowed His blessing.

The Sabbath was not a mandate for Adam and Eve.
It was not yet in humanity's order.

This rest was God's alone - not for His tiredness -
He is never weary. He cannot be,
for He is All-Energy . . .
limitless strength and unending vigor.

God blessed the day of His rest that He might
enjoy his works, take pleasure in their conclusion.

The Creator is Ecstasy, He is Joy.
Even God - who rules and patterns Time and Timelessness -
gives space to reflection, to His own bliss of quiet
and the order of nothing-going-on.

Take your own Sabbath, not a day of goings and meetings,
but a Sabbath where you sit with God.
And you will find yourself entering
His remarkable blessing on a time
deliberately given to stillness . . .
Rest . . . to ponder grass,
stare at skies, wander paths,
to sleep and dream . . .
and soak in silent joy.

And . . .
Sabbath is the time God spent enjoying His Son.
The Son who delighted in Him
and the Son of His Own Delight.

Just a glimpse into the Days of God's enchanted creation . . .

I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
when he established the clouds above and
fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
when he gave the sea its boundary
so the waters would not overstep his command
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.

Then I was the craftsman at his side,
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in mankind.
Proverbs 8:22-36 NIV

The Sabbath was yet another creation.
The creation of . . . rest.
God created rest on the seventh day.
God creates by speaking, by forming, by working
and even . . . by resting.
His unlimited creating is a constant pouring and ever new.
He is the Creator, always creating.
    
God prepared all for his Prize, humanity.
He even made this seventh day, blessed above the other six,
and He laid it in store,
set it into unending motion for
our deepest coming need.

Sabbath will transcend the other days and
rise in the end as a healing gift to mankind,
the ultimate solution to his weary fallen state.   

Sabbath-blessed is the promise and the story of the Son.
Jesus is the Sabbath and we who believe into Him,
will come to
rest in His bliss of humanity's completion,
in His stunning "It is finished."
    
Jesus said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man,
and not man for the Sabbath.
So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."
Mark 2:27, 28 NAS

Those things blessed of God are launched on a course
of multiplication, infinite increase.
So the Blessed Sabbath - the Rest of God by His Son -
will magnify . . . and grow . . . and expand . . .
so that it will one day be the primary principle,
the Only Day of
God's children.

Copyright © 2001 Martha Blaney Kilpatrick