The Gift of Work

My good friend, Bill, is an avid reader.  One of those rare guys who finds really good stuff to read, not necessarily what's trendy, but what matters.  Lately he's been reading a good book on the subject of work, entitled, "Work: The Meaning of your Life," by Lester DeKoster.

Bill shared with me one thought-provoking tidbit from the book that I thought I'd pass along:

"Work connects us with people and gives us opportunity for relationships, allowing us to come alongside others and help them discover who Jesus is, and learn to follow Him."

I couldn't agree more.  Too often we view work as something we have to do in order to do the other things we want to do.  Seems to me to be a pretty sad way to spend the bulk of one's waking hours.  The Bible teaches us that this is just not so.  Rather, the Bible presents work as a gift from God, given to mankind before Adam and Eve blew it in the garden.  So the idea of work is pre-Fall, pre-judgement, and pre-curse.  Work actually gives us the opportunity to operate within our design as beings created in God's own image.

For people of faith, work provides opportunity for creativity, honest labor, initiative, enterprise and satisfaction.  Granted, we have all had bosses who were, shall we say, trying, but God can and does even use less-than-ideal bosses to mold and shape our responses, and to mature us.  And sometimes He uses these people to redirect us toward something else He has in mind for us to do.

But most of all, work provides us opportunity to be, as Jesus said, "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world."  As people get to know us and observe our lives, those of us who claim to follow Jesus should demonstrate a winsomeness - as He did - that causes people to reexamine their own lives, their own perspectives, and their own relationships - or not - with their Creator.  This, and the events that normally attend life - births, deaths, stresses, strains, relational issues, raising kids - provide opportunties for Christians to provide loving friendship and to share a bit of relevant truth.

Work is not a curse, but a blessing - not something we have to do, but something we get to do, for the glory of the One who gave it to us as a gift.