Creation-Savings Time

The two most important weeks in the life of God and us are the week of creation and Holy Week. They are parallel weeks of creation. It was on the first Sunday of the world that God saw the chaos and said, "Let there be light." It was on the first Sunday of the re-creation of the world that Jesus rode into the spiritual chaos of Jerusalem.

"And there was evening and there was morning, the first day," the Bible says. In the Old Testament the day begins at sundown. The day begins with darkness just like the universe began with darkness before God created light. So, every sunrise reenacts the first work of creation. On the first day of Holy Week Jesus rides into Jerusalem to confront the spiritual darkness. The re-creation of the sunrise has begun.

On the last day of God's work in creation, God made human beings, male and female. He made them in his own image. "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day." On the seventh day God rested.

Good Friday is the sixth day of Holy Week. The sun was setting as Jesus died on the cross. The religious leaders didn't want him on the cross when the sun went down because that was the beginning of the Sabbath. So, they had the Roman soldiers make sure he was dead by piercing his side with a lance. He was dead. The work of recreation was done. Joseph of Arimathea took his body and laid it in his own family tomb. So it was that God rested again from his labors on the seventh day.

When the sun went down on the seventh day, the day we call Saturday, the day the Spanish-speaking call Sabado (from the word Sabbath), God set the clock forward. Just the way we set the clock forward when we go to bed the Saturday night before daylight-saving time, God set the clock forward the night following the Sabbath. Never again would the day begin with the dark, but rather with the light. The Lord's Day had moved from the end of the week to the beginning of the week, from Saturday to Sunday, from Sabado to Domingo, from the day of rest to the day of God. Since then we have been living on Creation-Savings Time.

Every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, the recognition that we now live on Creation-Savings Time, but Easter is the one time in the year where the celebration follows a week's reenactment of the work God did to put us on Creation-Savings Time.

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Copyright 2003 by Roland McGregor, all rights reserved.
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