This morning, in preparing for a story feast on summer stories, I opened Genesis 1 and 2 in Eugene Peterson’s The Message.
In this translation, Genesis 1:31 says,
“God looked over everything he had made;
it was so good, so very good!
It was evening, it was morning–
Day Six.”
Genesis 2:2-4 says,
“By the 7th day
God had finished his work.
On the 7th day
he rested from all his work.
God blessed the 7th day.
He made it a holy day
because on that day
he rested from his work,
all the creating God had done.”
About the same of rest, rhythm, and time, Eugene Peterson says:
“We were created to live rhythmically in the rhythms of creation…
The understanding and honoring of time is fundamental to the realization of who we are and how we live.Violations of sacred time become desecrations of our most intimate relationships with God and one another hours and days, weeks and months and years are the very stuff of holiness.
Time is the medium in which we do all living. When time is desecrated, life is desecrated. The most conspicuous evidences of this desecration are hurry and procrastination. Hurry turns away from the gift of time in a compulsive grasping for abstractions that it can possess and control. Procrastination is distracted from the gift of time and a lazy inattentiveness to the life of obedience and adoration by which we enter ‘the fullness of the time’ (Gal. 4:4). Whether by a hurried grasping or a procrastinating inattention, the holiness of time is violated.” Conversations: The Message Bible with Its Translator.
As a formerly “hurried-woman,” these words hit me hard. After three shoulder surgeries in two years, I am living in a season of imposed rest. The question for me is,”Will I called this rest good?” what about you? What time struggle are you currently living? Let’s take a few moments now to ask God to reveal himself intimately to us in this place. And let’s listen for his answer.
