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Key Bible Verse: "As long as the earth remains, there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night" Genesis 8:22. Bonus Reading: Psalm 104:19-23

We are immersed in the rhythms of creation. Seven days repeated in a sequence of four weeks places us in the rhythm of the 28-day phases of the moon circling the earth. This lunar rhythm repeats 12 times in the annual sweep of earth around the sun. These encompassing rhythms call forth regularities of spring births, summer growth, autumn harvest, and winter sleep. Creation time is rhythmic.

But we were also created composed of rhythms. Physiologically we live out rhythms of pulse and breath. Our hearts beat steadily, circulating our blood through our bodies in impulses of 60 or 80 or 100 times a minute. Our lungs expand and contract, pushing oxygen through our bodies 15 or 20 or 30 times a minute.

An interesting thing about rhythm: Just as in music and dance, we can slow down or quicken the tempo, but we can't eliminate the beat, the cadence. This is the nature of the creation of which we're a part. We're embedded in time, but time is also embedded in us. Creation is called into being, not haphazardly and not in a cacophony of noise but rhythmically. As we listen and observe, we find ourselves integrated into the rhythms.

—Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

My Response: Do I live life without reference to Creation time? Or do I adjust to it?

Adapted from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Eerdmans, 2005) by permission.

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Help me, Lord, to rediscover the rhythm that You built into Your universe for our benefit.

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