"I set them as markers of days, months and year..."

I can imagine God saying words like that as he gently explains the way he created his universe.
The sun, the moon, the stars, they have their purposes and they set in rhythm the times and seasons. The only frame of time that we follow that is not explained by these heavenly bodies is the week.  And yet I feel as if today, the week might be the most important rhythm that we follow. Meeting are scheduled by the week. Everyone knows when the weekend comes and the when is will be over, we get excited about long weekends, or special weeks.

"Six days you shall work and on the seventh you shall rest" we all like a day of rest, and honestly we know we are better with it.  Yet I have noticed that too often we let the chaos of the world seep into our sacred times and spaces.

God created the world out of nothing, but not just the complete absence of substance, but complete and utter chaos.  I imagine it to be like when a storm comes through and reports use the phrase 'completely wiped out' 'nothing left', but there is something there, but what is left is complete chaos and unusable in any way shape or form. It is worse than just starting with a blank slate because you have got to know what to do with the mess that is left.  Maybe it is that there was literally no matter, and in addition to that the laws of nature and the way that we know life to function were also in complete disarray. (*I am not a scientist and have no way of proving stuff like this, so please take it with a large grain of salt)

And with his very own words God called order out of the chaos, separating the water and the land, the sky and the earth, each animal from the next. He separated spaces and he separated times and it was the way that it was suppose to be.

"On the seventh he rested from all his work" he not only rested, he blessed that day and made it holy, set apart for rest. And this too was order out of the chaos.

Six days were created to create and the seventh was created to rest. I find myself all too often taking my rest while I ought to be creating and then end up creating in the space where I ought to be resting. I take breaks or let myself get distracted, telling myself deadlines are further away. I putter away, until time gets around and to accomplish the things I need to I end up sacrificing the day of rest.

The rhythms and cycles of days, weeks, months and years, is one of the ways that God brings order to chaos. And something inside seems that when we start to disregard these ways, in a subtle way we are telling God that our ways are better than his. That to rest now, or to work then is better than the way that he set it to be.

I do understand that it is impossible for everyone to strictly follow all the rules that the Pharisees laid out, and by not mean do I EVER want to advocate or go back to that. That seems to be equally chaotic as not doing it at all. Living in Israel this year, there are three different 'holy days' and they are celebrated by the three major religions, it is slightly complicated at first, but after a little, it becomes a rhythm and each one falls into a rhythm of creating and resting.

I am going to do my best to create what God has set for me to create so that I can truly rest when God has set time to rest.