One thing remarkable about the Sabbath is when it is first given to humanity. Adam and Eve are not created, then told to work for six days with the promise of a day of rest to come on the seventh. In Genesis 1, they receive the Sabbath barely a few hours after taking their first breath! Yes, Adam named a few animals and then went through the exhilarating experience of meeting the love of his life, but that hardly seems to require a full day of rest.
Doesn’t it?
From a transactional point of view, one that requires an equal, or agreed upon, exchange of goods benefiting all parties involved, a full day of rest after a few hours of life isn’t fair nor profitable. Adam and Eve should have worked a week, and then God should have given them a well deserved rest. Our lives bear witness of this. We rarely give ourselves room to breathe unless we feel we’ve earned, or unless our bodies fall apart on us. I believe one of the reasons we struggle to rest, and to live from that rest, is the underlying belief that we cannot afford to rest.
If we want to be loved, by God and those around us, and if we want the good life, then we’ve got to work as long and as hard as we are able to.
Rest and the good life need to be hard earned. But from the point of view of grace and love, a full day of rest is exactly what Adam and Eve needed. God wanted them to know that they were lovable because they were his, not because of what they did. He wanted them to go one and work hard for six days every week not to earn their rest, and the Love that gave it to them, but from that lovely rest. Their good lives would not be a reward for good behavior, but the flourishing consequence of knowing themselves loved beyond measure by the Maker of all things.
I believe that we love each other one way or the other.
We often relate to people around us ready to offer our love if or when they do something beneficial to us in return. As I am hinting, this is not the way the Biblical God loves us. Paul Kingsnorth warns us that love as a transaction, far from the Christian ideals, measuring everything by gain and profit, can cause us to
“become slaves to the power of money, and worshipers of the self.”
On the other hand, we can love pursuing the greater good of the people around us. Simply put, we can love not hoping to get something, but eager to give everything. This is, after all, what Jesus hoped to do when He said:
“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)
The question is: how do I love those around me? Is my love a gift or a transaction? Am I sacrificially modeling Christ and pointing people to my Heavenly Father, or am I loving people only if or when they do what conveniences me?
