Gen 2:2, “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made”.
An automatic electric kettle is a simple gadget with an interesting functionality. When the water or the liquid being heated boils, the heater automatically goes off. That is what human bodies are like. After a day, week, month and year of work, the body needs a rest. We may ignore the calls of the body and go on working industriously without heeding. Some people are motivated by overtime payments; others are workaholics while others still, chase after promotions to bigger titles. None of these is sin. However turning on the knob after it has automatically gone off could be disastrous. It’s like putting the power on when it automatically goes off due to low voltage. This could result in high resistance in the circuit and hence a burst up. Daily working hours, weekends, off-days, leave days, sabbatical leave, school holidays and vacations were all set to help give fatigued bodies ample rest. These are human guidelines on periodic respite. But God rested after a week of saying ‘let there be’ and ‘soiling his hands’ with mud to bring forth creation. His rest was symbolic. Since we are created in his image, we need to rest as He did.
This said, there is much more to life than working. Besides, work is only a subset or a segment of life. The other side of the coin is rest, retreat, devotional bible study, prayer and many others. Balancing these requires a little bit of wisdom which will come when we have allowed God’s will in our lives. When we ignore the will of God, our life may be haphazard. Psalms 37:23 says ‘the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the LORD…’ Life is about steps. If these are not ordered of God, we will work more and relax less, pray more and work less, relax and work not, do devotional study and relax not and many more imbalanced matrices. Extremes of either side will affect our mechanical, spiritual, and mental output. So what do we conclude? If we work smarter we will have daily rest and weekend outs. If we have leave or off-days let the money not deceive us to rove on. If our young kids, brothers and sisters in schools have vacations, taking them for vacation tutoring may achieve little, if anything.
-johnstone katuku.