It is amazing how we can look at a family line and see resemblances. Facial features, personalities traits, hobbies, lines of work – all can be passed down from one generation to another. Sometimes it is a positive occurrence, sometimes not. But it is always a striking moment in time when your eyes are opened to the fact that you are “just like someone else”. A sense of responsibility hits us when we realize that those born after us could bear a resemblance to us in some way. It causes us to toe the line.

Scripture tells us:

“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27 NIV). 

Here we are told, whether male or female, we have been created in God’s image, meant to reflect His nature. Man was created on the sixth day. An interesting thing happens at this point.

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning””the sixth day.  

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” (Genesis 1: 29 – 3:3 NIV). 

There we have it – God worked. God rested.

Granted, it had to be a busy six days by which He created not only everything we can see and feel and touch with our senses but the human race as well. Yet I do not think He rested out of fatigue. I think He rested for us.

I think He rested so that, being made in His likeness, we would follow His example and likewise take time to rest.

Let’s face it – there will always be something that needs to get done. What’s the saying?

                                         “A woman’s work is never done.”

                                         Neither is a man’s, for the record 🙂

Yet we need those times of rest.

Dictionary.com defines “rest”….

• refreshing ease or inactivity after exertion or labor

• relief or freedom, especially from anything that wearies, troubles, or disturbs

• a period or interval of inactivity, repose, solitude, or tranquillity

• mental or spiritual calm 
  

Rest is meant to refresh, relieve, and free us from the drudgery we face in the routine, in the mundane. Rest is meant to be a time of tranquility and calmness.

When we rest, or honor the Sabbath, we begin to resemble our God whose likeness we are made in. Something happens to us when we rest. Mark Buchanan in his book, “The Rest of God” puts it this way:

“God commands that we imitate Him in order to discover again that we’re not Him and that we need Him.” (page 88).

“Be still, and know that I am God”. (Psalm 46:10 NIV).