Troublesome TopicCycles in Nature

Rest in Cycles So Rest’s Overflow Can Bless Others

Many things in nature demonstrate cycles; here are a few examples:

~  Night & Day

~  Sleep & work 

~  The four seasons, or if you are in the tropics there are two seasons, rainy season and dry season.

~ Some animals hibernate. This too is a cycle involving rest.

~  Plants have dormant stages and stages of growth.

The rings we can count in a crosscut indicate growth spurts divided by times of dormancy.

~  Growth spurts in children or youth.

You wake up one morning and say to your teenage son, “You grew during the night.” You buy new clothes for school when they go on sale and by the time school starts the pants are too short.

~  Healing of muscles after heavy use.

Why do the pitchers on professional baseball teams not pitch two nights in a row? After all, they are professionals, right? They should be able to handle it. But no, the body needs time to heal. Pitching with the force and repetition that they do creates small tears in the muscle tissues of the shoulder. Those tears need time to heal. Body-builders follow a strict schedule of working those muscles till they are sore (indicating that some tissue tearing has occurred) and resting to let the muscle heal. When this process is done properly the muscles become larger and stronger. When not enough time is allowed for healing the muscles are injured and become weaker.

~ Land must be allowed to rest from bearing crops or it will get worn out. Because the children of Israel did not give the land its time to rest as God had commanded them, the Lord Himself gave the land time to rest while they were in captivity in Babylon. II Chron. 36:21 says, “To fulfill the word of YHVH (read Adonai) by the mouth of Jeremiah, the land enjoyed her Sabbaths; all the time during which she lay desolate she rested

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until seventy years were completed.”

~ We should rest also, both physically and spiritually, at regular intervals. God said: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of YHVH (read Adonai) your Elohim; you shall do no work in it.” If the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord, that means He owns that day; it is His. He gave this command because He made us and knows what we need. We ignore rest to our own demise.

The next lesson is The Overflow Principle Demonstrated in the Habits of Jesus

Footnotes

1

This is the word for “Sabbath” used as a verb; “to sabbath,” means “to rest.”