Tuesday, November 03, 2009

there was evening and then there was morning

so i'm working my way through the book of genesis with a friend of mine and i've been working/wrestling/reading/studying/listening to sermons and so on, on the genesis for a while now.

this morning as we were studying and discussing it, and we only made it to day 2 this morning, but we noticed something that i had never picked up on and had just skimmed over it all the other times i had read genesis 1.

vs 5 - "God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day." (Jewish Study Bible)

Nothing out of the ordinary if you were to just read it and move right along you're merry way.

what caught us off guard was that he mentions, after he names them "Day" and "Night", he then says that there was "evening and there was morning".

he mentions evening and then morning. i wonder if that maybe means that God starts his day off with rest. i seem to find myself saying that i start my day off with morning, with light, with the "morning", but it caused me to see a new side of "rest" of maybe "sabbath."

maybe my day is out of balance if i don't start out with rest, if i don't see that i start my day off in rest.

this then caused my mind to run to the book of psalms where chapter 62 talks about resting in God.
62:1 - "Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him."

62:5-8 - "Yes, my soul finds rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress. I will not be shaken. My salvation and honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge."

maybe we need to find rest first, before any more of our creative process begin to happen. maybe we need to find rest, find "evening" in our own lives, before we can find the "morning", before we begin to be about the creative process of restoring all things back to Jesus. reconciling all things back to Jesus. maybe we first need to find rest.

this may not be huge, it may just be a shift in my thought process of how i start my day off, not with the morning, but with rest. rest in God. rest in knowing that my salvation comes from him, being Jesus. rest in God being my refuge. rest in my hope that i have in him.

so may i, may we, find rest in God. may we begin with "evening" and then "morning" can happen.