By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
The seventh day, sanctified by God for rest, underlines a universal need for downtime. Studies indicate productivity diminishes beyond 55-hour workweeks, showing God’s wisdom in structured work balanced with rest enhances efficiency. Christians remember Jesus as a model for intentional breaks amidst busy lives, supporting a cyclical rhythm of work and worship.
And so the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their heavenly lights. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (Genesis 2:1-3).
Even people who aren’t saved know the 7th day is for rest. Our entire weekly schedule here in America reflects this. Stores are closed on Sunday, the pace is slower.
I like The Andy Griffith Show. It debuted in 1960. Andy is Sheriff in a slow moving, small town and the characters of the town are at various times hard working, quirky, gracious, loving. In a memorable episode called Man in a Hurry,
“Harried businessman Malcolm Tucker’s car breaks down just outside of Mayberry. Tucker’s efforts to have the car repaired come to naught as it is Sunday, rendering the sleepy town downright somnambulant; its citizens contentedly doze away the day on front porches after church, all work put off until Monday morning. Tucker struggles to maintain his outrage at being stuck in such a backward hamlet, but the unfailing charm and graciousness of its inhabitants eventually break through his dour demeanor to leave him bemused, reflective, and touched.
Andy patiently explains to the harried man that the people and stores he will need to fix his car are closed on Sunday. Even the telephone is unavailable because the townsfolks allow the line to be tied up with two elderly sisters who live apart to talk to each other on Sunday.
Knowing nothing can be done to get the man in a hurry on his way, Andy says, “Why don’t you just figure on stayin’ over, Mr. Tucker? It’s nigh impossible to get anything done here on Sunday.”
Mr. Tucker rails against the supposed lack of progress and lack of of focus on industry Mayberry presents,
This is the 20th century. Don’t you realize that? The whole world is living in a desperate space age. Men are orbiting the earth. International television has been developed. And here, a whole town is standing still because two old women’s feet fall asleep!
Thwarted at every turn, the man eventually succumbs to the small town charms and hospitality of Mayberry, slowing down to enjoy the rest of the day. It’s my favorite episode of the Andy Griffith Show.
All this to say that there was a news article recently which caught my eye.
Why God and the Bible were right about your work schedule all along
I bet that headline would catch your eye, too! The article begins this way-
Most units of time are based on nature. A day is one rotation of the Earth. A month is the moon’s orbit. A year is the Earth’s path around the sun. But a week? There’s no natural explanation for it. (Source)
Have you ever thought about that? Why or how the calendar has been constructed the way it has? Anyway, you might not be old enough to remember the 1980s when ads, which reflect the culture of the time, promoted pursuing leisure as a main goal in life,
Popular commercials in the 1980s and ’90s portrayed the ideal life as one of leisure: playing polo, loading fancy dogs into a car and diving off a yacht into the ocean. Then, around the year 2000, everything flipped. Suddenly, busyness became the new badge of honor. A new locution entered the lexicon — that people are “crazy busy.” (Source)
Except, it is discovered that the more ‘crazy busy’ a person is, the LESS you produce. The article provides results for an old study from 1915 and then a new study, where-
Numerous studies have found that there is a productivity ceiling. … He determined that production correlated with work hours for the first 49 hours a week. The rate of production slowed for the hours 50 to 55. However, there was no increase in output from hours 56 to 70. The Economist, in reviewing Pencavel’s work, concluded, “That extra 14 hours was a waste of time.” And so, we now have the number of what we have termed the “productivity ceiling”: It’s 55 hours a week. A Sabbath observer can work 10 hours a day for five days a week. (Source)
He can really only work half a day on the sixth, as he needs to prepare for Shabbat — leaving him with a 55-hour work week. So God was right. The good life isn’t all leisure or all work. It’s six days of meaningful work, followed by a seventh day of sacred rest. (Source)
The article took the productivity ceiling from a Jewish/Old Testament/Torah standpoint. We are not under the Old Testament Law any more, of course. Colossians 2:16-17 and Romans 14:5 show that New Testament Christians do not need to keep the Sabbath Law. The early history of the church recorded in Acts, however, does show that the believers met, worshiped, broke bred together regularly. They were workers too, so they had to take time from their work in order to meet, sing, break bread, pray, and have fellowship. They worshiped then rested.
We can look to our ultimate model, Jesus. He separated himself at times to take prolonged periods of rest for prayer, communion with the Father, or to have a meal with the disciples. When Jesus heard of Lazarus’ death, he withdrew to a private place to mourn. (Matthew 14:13). As an obedient, Law-abiding Jew, He rested on the Sabbath.
And He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a little while.” (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.) (Mark 6:31).
No man on earth nor shall there ever be, than Jesus who was ‘crazy busy’.
Our bodies don’t have endless physical capacity nor do our brains. We need rest and we need restful, intentional time to worship. It’s communion with God who restores us.
[We tend to let our pendulums swing from one end to the other, so here is a caution- don’t allow the necessity of rest extend into laziness].
As believers, we Christians know that God is right, all the time. Being on a constant cycle of work with no rest actually inhibits productivity. We need time to recover from the work-week’s stresses, to shed the weekly cares for a time to ponder life, love, family. To recalibrate. The Bible does say we must work or we will not eat. It doesn’t mean it must be paid work. Whatever you do during the work-week, stop for a day. You are apparently not doing yourself any favors by pushing through a 90 hour work-week. Shepherd your time, energy, mental acuity well. Because, God and the Bible were right about your work schedule all along!
Further Resources
Movie, Youtube- Metropolis . Metropolis is now widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, ranking 67th in Sight and Sound’s 2022 critics’ poll, and receiving general critical acclaim.
Work and our Labor in the Lord, In this book, pastor, professor, and biblical scholar James Hamilton explores how work fits into the big story of the Bible, revealing the glory that God intended when he gave man work to do, the ruin that came as a result of the fall, and the redemption yet to come, offering hope for flourishing in the midst of fallen futility.
Ligonier- Is Work Good? We don’t tend to think of work as good, but rather as difficult, frustrating, and exhausting. Perhaps that has more to do with our experience in this fallen age than it does with God’s design. The Bible helps us to change our perspective in several ways.
Ligonier, Rest What’s the point of labor and rest? Asking this question is like asking, “What’s the point of breathing?” Like breathing, the cycle of labor and rest is essential to life
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