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April 26 - April 28, 2023
one of the hopes for our unraveling society is the recovery of the idea that all human work is not merely a job but a calling.
our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests.
Everyone imagines accomplishing things, and everyone finds him- or herself largely incapable of producing them. Everyone wants to be successful rather than forgotten, and everyone wants to make a difference in life. But that is beyond the control of any of us.
If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavour, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever. That is what the Christian faith promises.
Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality; it is not simply medicine but food for our soul.
Without meaningful work we sense significant inner loss and emptiness.
According to the Bible, we don’t merely need the money from work to survive; we need the work itself to survive and live fully human lives.
You will not have a meaningful life without work, but you cannot say that your work is the meaning of your life.
Work has dignity because it is something that God does and because we do it in God’s place, as his representatives.
This also means that “secular” work has no less dignity and nobility than the “sacred” work of ministry.
Work is our design and our dignity; it is also a way to serve God through creativity, particularly in the creation of culture.
God owns the world, but he has put it under our care to cultivate it. It is definitely not a mandate to treat the world and its resources as if they are ours to use, exploit, and discard as we wish.
Just as he subdued the earth in his work of creation, so he calls us now to labor as his representatives in a continuation and extension of that work of subduing.
Recognizing the God who supplies our resources, and who gives us the privilege of joining in as cocultivators, helps us enter into our work with a relentless spirit of creativity.
Through our work we bring order out of chaos, create new entities, exploit the patterns of creation, and interweave the human community.
Our daily work can be a calling only if it is reconceived as God’s assignment to serve others. And that is exactly how the Bible teaches us to view work.
The question must now be “How, with my existing abilities and opportunities, can I be of greatest service to other people, knowing what I do of God’s will and of human need?”
Your daily work is ultimately an act of worship to the God who called and equipped you to do it—no matter what kind of work it is.
God made us for work, yet now we learn that work becomes, under sin, “painful toil” (verse 17). Work is not itself a curse, but it now lies with all other aspects of human life under the curse of sin.
The experience of work will include pain, conflict, envy, and fatigue, and not all our goals will be met.
You should expect to be regularly frustrated in your work even though you may be in exactly the right vocation.
No one claims that his or her own life is as it should be, let alone the whole world. There is something wrong within us. Nothing ever seems to make us happy or fulfilled except in the most fleeting way.
Our worldview places our work in the context of a history, a cause, a quest, and a set of protagonists and antagonists, and in so doing it frames the strategy of our work at a high level.
Only the Christian worldview locates the problem with the world not in any part of the world or in any particular group of people but in sin itself (our loss of relationship with God). And it locates the solution in God’s grace (our restoration of a relationship with God through the work of Christ).
Each of us is capable of the worst kind of evil, and there is nothing we can do to change ourselves, or even see ourselves in our true light, without God’s help.
it is a mistake to think that the Christian worldview is operating only when we are doing such overtly Christian activities. Instead, think of the gospel as a set of glasses through which you “look” at everything else in the world.
Becoming a Christian is a lot like moving to a new country; only it is more profound, because it gives us a new perspective on every culture, every worldview, and every field of work. In the long run, the gospel helps us see everything in a new light, but it takes time to grasp and incorporate this new information into how we live and pursue our vocations.
As Jesus says, to be fully human boils down to loving God and loving our neighbor. Everything else—our accomplishments, our causes, our identity, and our feelings—is a distant second.
But treating people as human beings with dignity rather than interchangeable resources means being transparent with information, offering extensive two-way communication, and seeking genuinely to persuade rather than merely to control people’s responses.
It’s liberating to accept that God is fully aware of where you are at any moment and that by serving the work you’ve been given you are serving him.
When your heart comes to hope in Christ and the future world he has guaranteed—when you are carrying his easy yoke—you finally have the power to work with a free heart.
