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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Dr Marika Rose.

Good morning. The book of Genesis says that God spent six days creating the earth, and then God rested: a poetic image which tells us something important. We live in a world which increasingly treats rest as though it’s only important insofar as it helps us to work better, and more efficiently, but the ordering of things in Genesis suggests something different – rest isn’t just a pause in the middle of work, it’s the goal of work, the end of work, the crowning glory of creation.

Why did God create the world? Theologians have traditionally argued that God didn't create the world out of necessity: there wasn't a problem that God needed to solve or a lack in God that needed to be fixed by bringing things into existence. Creation is not for anything. It’s not meant to achieve anything. It's not useful: it's just good. It’s not hard to see the world as full of this unnecessary goodness. There’s something very over-the-top about the whole thing, something super-abundant. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies. There are millions of different species on earth. There are luminescent sea creatures at the bottom of the ocean, there are blobfish; there are peacocks; there are fractal vegetables.

Lord God, today may we have time to appreciate the people, plants and objects around us, not for what they do but just for what they are? Grant us rest, so that we can enjoy the marvellous, extravagant, unnecessary creation that we are. Thank you, God, for filling the world with such marvels. Help us today to pause and to rest – not so we can go back to work more efficiently, but so that we can enjoy things for their own sake. Amen.