THE MYSTERIOUS WEEKLY RHYTHM
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Chronobiology is the study of how living things handle time.
The most intriguing of all biological rhythms are those set to a clock of about seven days. In his chapter "The Importance of Time," Jeremy Campbell reports:
"These circaseptan, or about weekly, rhythms are one of the major surprises turned up by modern chronobiology. Fifteen years ago, few scientists would have expected that seven-day biological cycles would prove to be so widespread and so long established in the living world. [20]
As Campbell says, this inherent rhythm has to do with the internal logic of the body, not with the external logic of the world.
If the seven-day week is an invention of culture and religion, as most historians would have us believe, how do we explain innate circaseptan rhythms in "primitive" algae, rats, plants, and face flies? ​
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OUR INTERNAL SEVEN-DAY CLOCK
In addition to being the key coordinating rhythm for the rest of the body's many rhythmic interactions, a seven-day cycle has been found in fluctuations of blood pressure, acid content in blood, red blood cells, heartbeat, oral temperature, female breast temperature, urine chemistry and volume, the ratio between two important neurotransmitters, norepinephrine and epinephrine, and the rise and fall of several body chemicals such as the stress coping hormone, cortisol.
"In fact," Perry and Dawson note, "Weekly rhythms appear easiest to detect when the body is under stress, such as when it is defending itself against a virus, bacterium, or other harmful intruder. For example, cold symptoms last about a week. Chickenpox symptoms usually appear almost exactly two weeks after exposure to the illness.:" [27]
Healing is also recognized by the medical community to work in cycles of seven: malaria, pneumonia, organ transplants; to name a few.
Out of the mind-numbing complexity of life a certain organizing rhythm starts to surface. Now we discover that the beat all life is tuned to is seven.
"In Franz Halberg's view," summarizes Campbell, "A striking aspect of this relationship is that the components themselves appear to be harmonics or sub harmonics, multiples or submultiples, of seven, a number that has played a disproportionately large role in human culture, myth, religion, magic and the calendar." [31]
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LIFE BEGINS AT SEVEN
"For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful; I know that full well" (Psalm 139:13-14).
Not only did the Designer/Creator leave his fingerprints on everything he made, but he also left his calling card bonded to living cells telling us when he made life: in a seven-day creation week. That's when he wound up the clock of life and set it ticking in each of its forms to a rhythm of sevens.
He gave life the frequency of seven. It's the beat of creation, a harmonic that points directly to the life-starter, life-giver himself!
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A WEEKLY TRIP TO EDEN
A key control to keep humankind in harmony with the created order and with the Creator/Savior himself is the Sabbath institution.
Here is how the biblical "circaseptan" could operate to accomplish a harmonizing rhythm between man and God. At the national societal level, a day of rest requires intellectual, philosophical, legal, and moral commitment to its institution. Commercial and social affairs would be integrated into a six-day work, seventh-day rest cycle. The Sabbath would be used by society for physical rest and relaxation, for family and social bonding, for biblical teaching, for meditation and spiritual renewal.
At the personal level, a Sabbath would provide an organizing principle for daily life. God's seven-day cycle, would become our cycle and thus our schedules, plans, and affairs would all be influenced by it. Rather than attempting to fit the things of God into our too busy world, we would instead, with purpose, be engaged in fitting our lives into the plan and rhythm of our Creator. Now that we know of the biological base, the circaseptan of life, this would truly be "getting into the flow" of power, in tune with the pulse of God's universe.
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Written by: Ken Westby