THE NEW YEAR - 52 MORE WEEKS

Our current dates are based on the Gregorian calendar, developed by Pope Gregory XIII and his assistants in AD 1582. It replaced the Julian calendar which was from way back in the age of Caesar – 45 BC to be exact.

And calendars are exact.  They must be to keep everyone in the USA and around the world in sync. Imagine if we didn’t have a calendar. One would ask, “When is your birthday?” and you could reply, “I think it’s tomorrow,” and nobody would know any better. You could celebrate whenever you wanted and get lots of presents. But you wouldn’t know if you were 20 or 30 years old. One day you’d look in the mirror and think, “Wow! I must be pretty old now.” Of course this happens even with calendars.

Back to the 52 weeks: The year is based on the solar cycle. We can stick a post in the ground and see how the path of its shadow changes to determine when a year has passed. The month is based on the lunar cycle – full moon to full moon [including some supermoons] or new moon to new moon. [No green cheese.]  And days are a result of the rising and setting sun. As it says in Genesis, God created these to be “for signs and for seasons and for days and years.”

But what is the seven day week based on? Several websites have come up with all kinds of historical speculation – the Babylonians, India, Persia – all had seven days in their week. But where did they get this idea? Again, it comes from the Bible. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. All of the ancients had received a verbal history of creation week, so they adopted it for their calendars.

By the way, in 1929 the Soviet Union changed their calendar to a ten day week, but it didn’t last long because of all the confusion it caused. They went back to seven days like other countries.

So I hope we all have a Happy New Year, which will once again provide us with 52 weeks of seven days each in which to do our work, eat, spend time with our family, sleep, have vacations, golf or participate in other sports, worship our Creator, and enjoy a weekly day of rest as God planned.

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 12/31/16.