Creation

I've just started reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Dan Allender, called Sabbath.  I'm only in chapter 2 and he's already flipped my thinking upside down and brought up some very strong emotions from the past.  Which maybe at some point I'll write about, but have hardly told anyone because people would laugh at me and think I'm crazy.  We will see when I am brave enough.  This blog, however, is not about that it's about when did God stop creating.  I can remember back in 9th grade when I took a test in ancient history and one of the questions was "Which day did God finish creating?"  or something like that.  I asked the teacher if it was a trick question because God created things in 6 days, but there's the Bible mentions the 7th day as God resting, but that's not creating; right?  The teacher told me it was not a trick question so I circled 6 and got it right.  Now 9 years later, I realized I got that question wrong.  Genesis 2:2 states And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done."  It doesn't say that God was finished with His work so He rested, rather He "ended His work."  This may seem like a contradiction to the previous verse, "This the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished."  So what did God create?  The Bible is not exactly clear what God created, but if nothing else He created the seventh day and rest.  This work was not a physical work, but rather a spiritual one (27-28).  Allender translates the word "rest" as "delight".  So God delighted in His creation and thus we need to do the same.  Just as God worked to bring about His delight/rest in creation.  We need to work to find out delight/rest as well.  I want to end by a quote from Allender that really sums up is idea of work on the seventh day.  He writes, "In many ways, God's rest on the seventh day of creation is paralleled by the birthing process and teh period after birth, when the labor is finished yet the bonding begins" (28).  Bonding takes work, but it is a emotional/spiritual work rather than the physical work of labor.