Genesis is vital among the Biblical books for reasons that have nothing to do with what the typical Christian focuses on, like the supposed automatic exclusion of macroevolution. The first place in the Bible where the existence of an uncaused cause is put forth (though Genesis does not contradict the logical fact that the laws of logical and empty space by necessity exist even without God or the cosmos [1]), it is also where the first Biblical affirmation of gender egalitarianism is found, where the idea that physical matter is not evil is found, which has ramifications for everything from nudity to scientific curiosity, and where the concept of sin is Biblically introduced. Genesis also introduces the Sabbath pattern that is later given more elaboration in the Torah.
Genesis 2:2-3 describes God as resting on the seventh day after six days of creating various aspects of the physical world and the creatures that live in it. The day before he rests, of course, is the day where he creates humans, the pinnacle of his earthly creations and the one kind of being said to bear his very image. God's rest on the seventh day is said to be the basis for the ongoing command to rest on the seventh day or Sabbath, which does not necessarily mean to rest on any particular day of the modern calendar [2]. The idea of the Biblical text is really just to abstain from work where possible (there are exceptions I have covered previously) for one day for every six days of work, not to rigidly have a Sabbath on the same day as the ancient Jews or the same day modern Christians tend to go to church.
The true nature of the Sabbath command and the practicalities of upholding it aside, the Biblical God rests almost immediately after creating humans, unless by "day" Genesis means something different than a generally 24 hour period, in order to foreshadow the human need to rest and the freedom found within leisure and rejuvenation. By himself resting even though he does not need to, the Biblical God, whose nature is moral goodness itself, shows his approval for humans resting. For humans, though, rest is a practical necessity, from sleep to leisure. Without sleep, humans die or can be more vulnerable to other difficulties; without leisure, most people would suffer under boredom, burnout, or hopelessness.
The Sabbath pattern is something God himself chose to partake in, so in the context of Christianity, it is not something God demands of others without having already exemplified it beforehand. A being that created humans with the capacity for exhaustion and fatigue would be blatantly irrational to demand constant work and outward productivity from them in spite of their limitations, after all. Both work and leisure, therefore, have their moral and personal benefits on the Christian worldview, and God exemplifies what it is like to participate in both states of being. That the very first two chapters of the Bible are about divine action and rest, which in God's case is simply an abstinence from active creation and a more direct involvement in the cosmos, and this can be trivialized by Christians in a culture that pressures people into constant productivity of a kind that is not even practically necessary or helpful.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-impossibility-of-absolutely-nothing.html
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