Wednesday

137:4.1By noon on Wednes­day al­most a thou­sand guests had ar­rived in Cana, more than four times the num­ber bid­den to the wed­ding feast. It was a Jew­ish cus­tom to cel­e­brate wed­dings on Wednes­day, and the in­vi­ta­tions had been sent abroad for the wed­ding one month pre­vi­ously. In the forenoon and early af­ter­noon it ap­peared more like a pub­lic re­cep­tion for Je­sus than a wed­ding. Ev­ery­body wanted to greet this near-fa­mous Galilean, and he was most cor­dial to all, young and old, Jew and gen­tile. And ev­ery­body re­joiced when Je­sus con­sented to lead the pre­lim­i­nary wed­ding pro­ces­sion.

138:6.2It was at this time that Je­sus es­tab­lished the mid-week hol­i­day for rest and recre­ation. And they pur­sued this plan of re­lax­ation for one day each week through­out the re­main­der of his ma­te­rial life. As a gen­eral rule, they never pros­e­cuted their reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties on Wednes­day. On this weekly hol­i­day Je­sus would usu­ally take him­self away from them, say­ing: “My chil­dren, go for a day of play. Rest your­selves from the ar­du­ous labors of the king­dom and en­joy the re­fresh­ment that comes from re­vert­ing to your for­mer vo­ca­tions or from dis­cov­er­ing new sorts of recre­ational ac­tiv­ity.” While Je­sus, at this pe­riod of his earth life, did not ac­tu­ally re­quire this day of rest, he con­formed to this plan be­cause he knew it was best for his hu­man as­so­ciates. Je­sus was the teacher—the Mas­ter; his as­so­ciates were his pupils—dis­ci­ples.

141:3.1The Mas­ter and his apos­tles re­mained near Am­athus for al­most three weeks. The apos­tles con­tin­ued to preach twice daily to the mul­ti­tude, and Je­sus preached each Sab­bath af­ter­noon. It be­came im­pos­si­ble to con­tinue the Wednes­day play­time; so An­drew ar­ranged that two apos­tles should rest each day of the six days in the week, while all were on duty dur­ing the Sab­bath ser­vices.

177:0.1When the work of teach­ing the peo­ple did not press them, it was the cus­tom of Je­sus and his apos­tles to rest from their labors each Wednes­day. On this par­tic­u­lar Wednes­day they ate break­fast some­what later than usual, and the camp was per­vaded by an omi­nous si­lence; lit­tle was said dur­ing the first half of this morn­ing meal. At last Je­sus spoke: “I de­sire that you rest to­day. Take time to think over all that has hap­pened since we came to Je­ru­sa­lem and med­i­tate on what is just ahead, of which I have plainly told you. Make sure that the truth abides in your lives, and that you daily grow in grace.”