Most of our divisions of time have their sources in natural phenomenon. A day as 24 hours follows the time it takes for a full rotation of the earth, the months originally (and still in Judaism and Islam) follow a lunar cycle from one new moon to the next, and a year is the time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun. The only division of time with no natural basis is the week as a seven-day period.

While there are various theories about why the number seven became significant, the adoption of the seven-day week became widespread as a result of the Roman Emperor Constantine and as such its source takes us back to the Biblical account of creation. God created the world in seven days, for six days God worked and on the seventh day God rested.

Whether God literally created the world in seven days or in seven periods of time the lesson from the Biblical account is clear; if it is good for God to rest every seven days, surely it is good for us as well.

In our 24-7 society it can be hard to take a full day out away from the pressures and responsibilities of our jobs. Today we never really leave the office as we carry it with us on our phones and tablets, always contactable, always within reach and always on. The Biblical injunction for a day of rest once a week is perhaps more important today than it has ever been. We essentially need to be forced to switch off, to disconnect and to take time away from work.

God sets the example for us. The final element of creation was not humanity; it was a day of rest.

Dr. Matthew Sleeth, a former emergency room physician is the author of a book entitled “24/6: A Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life”. He advocates that people need to take a “stop day”, finding time to cease from the labors that define the other 6 days of the week. He suggests that people get ill from our nonstop way of life and that taking a day of rest comes with medical benefits.

A day of rest can help us feel healthier, but more than this it allows us the opportunity to reconnect with the things and people that are truly important. How often do we find ourselves saying, “I don’t have time”? The Bible offers us the answer; take one day a week to find the time, to break from the routine and to breathe. At the very end of our lives no one says that they wish they had worked more; but people do lament the fact that they didn’t take enough time for the things and people that mattered the most. We don’t need to wait until the end, the solution is thousands of years old, and all it takes is one day out of every seven.