Interesting Observation! What if God Rested or slept for just one second?
Do you believe in God? If yes, then this ‘funny’ question will make sense to you: What would happen if God rested or slept for just a second or a minute? In my opinion (and the Bible’s opinion too) is that everything else would be no more! God is the reality of everything. And without His active presence, even for a microsecond, there wouldn’t be reality!
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But wait! Vicent, you may ask, God would just be sleeping and or resting, right? That doesn’t mean He would be no more! He would just wake up to the same everything and continue His work, right?
Well, in some knowledge, for example, science, we are fooled to believe in the concept of self sustainability or self-reliance, especially of established systems. However, it’s foolish (or stupid) to believe that! What am I saying?
Take an example of our bodies. While most of us believe that indeed God created us and that He alone sustains our lives, ‘sloppy’ enthusiasts or scientists may think that by creating our body systems, God gave our bodies the possibility of self-reliance, even when He is away or asleep or resting under a tree, at least for a microsecond!
The respiratory system, lazy people theorize, would keep us breathing, the heart (cardiovascular) system would keep up with blood pumping, and the GIT (or digestive system) with our digestion and passing out stool, and our brains controlling it all, just as God meant it to be or do!
Providence on ‘What if God Rested’
Apparently, according to the doctrine of providence, the above isn’t possible. A single second of God’s literal resting or sleeping would crash everything to nothing! Why? Because, literary, God is or must be there fully participating at every single step of life, of everything. Without Him, even for a microsecond, there is nothing!
In other words, the heart valves wouldn’t even open and close unless God commanded them to, the lungs wouldn’t expand and relax unless God actively made them to, and the stool wouldn’t flash out of your anus or rectum unless He actively made it possible! To you, isn’t this embarrassing?
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Colossians 1:17 says; ‘And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.’ In other words, the reality is made possible by Him. While commenting on this verse and Hebrew 1:3, John Piper writes: ‘The world is not a machine that God made to run on its own. It is a painting, or a sculpture, or a drama. The Son of God holds it in being by the word of his power.’ (John Piper, Providence, page 20).
See Matthew 10:29-30: ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.‘ In other words, He is actively participating and making everything possible at the lowest level possible, including the number of hairs on your head or armpits or ‘the number of dancing dust particles in a beam of light’. That is what God’s providence is:
“Every morning God paints a different sunrise.” He never gets tired of doing it again and again. But then it struck me. No, he doesn’t do it again and again. He never stops doing it. The sun is always rising somewhere in the world. God guides the sun twenty-four hours every day and paints sunrises at every moment, century after century without one second of respite, and never grows weary or less thrilled with the work of his hands. Even when cloud cover keeps man from seeing it, God is painting spectacular sunrises above the clouds.“‘ John Piper, Providence, page 22.
John Piper defines it (God’s providence) as “the act of purposefully providing for, or sustaining and governing, the world.” (John Piper, Providence, page 31).
God didn’t create life and systems to be self-reliant without Him; He is their substance all the way!
Does it make sense? Ask questions! Thank you