Adam and Eve’s First Full Day on Earth

By: Ross Jelgerhuis

I’ve been working my way through a book entitled “Subversive Sabbath” by AJ Swoboda and, as someone who struggles to rest, it has been an equally encouraging and challenging read so far. There is much that I would love to share from his work, but for brevity’s sake I will spare you a book length reflection.

Swoboda begins the book by discussing a biblical framework for rest and makes an intriguing observation from the creation story about Adam and Eves's first encounter with the Sabbath. He writes:

Humanity was made on day six of creation. Day seven was that day in which God, Adam, Eve, and the whole garden ceased from productivity and effort. Striking as it is, Adam and Eve’s first full day of existence was a day of rest not work. What a first impression! Social scientists point out that we make up our minds about people in the first 100 milliseconds of our first meeting. Indeed, first impressions matter. Imagine what Adam and Eve learned about God’s generosity from their first impression of him on their first day. Their first knowledge of God and the world God had made was that rest was not an afterthought – rest was of first importance. (Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath, 7)

Swoboda then gives a helpful application of this idea, “Humanity had only God’s goodness to celebrate [on the first Sabbath], nothing more. Work had not even begun. The Sabbath teaches us that we do not work to please God. Rather, we rest because God is already pleased with the work he has accomplished in us” (Swobada, 7).

And how much more we see this in light of Christ! I love how the Christian Sabbath is on the first day of the week, it “baptizes our week into the grace and mercy of God” (Swoboda, 9). Holt & Rhodes agree, “When we begin each week in rest and celebration, we are confessing that his work on our behalf is perfect. Nothing is left for me to do to be reconciled to God….We do not labor, even labor for the Lord, toward rest. We labor, even labor for the Lord, from rest.” (Holt & Rhodes, Practicing the Kings Economy, 258).

My prayer is that we can experience Sabbath rest not simply as “the pause that refreshes…..[but] the pause that transforms.” (Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance, 40). I think viewing it in the ways described above is one place to start.

If you are willing to let Swoboda speak deeply into your practice and experience of Sabbath rest, I commend this volume to you (granted I am only about ½ way through) – read at your own risk!