Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human.

by John Mark Comer

But the next time I ran into Dave, he was beaming. It was obvious something had changed. Turns out, he did it. He quit the family business, and his dad was just fine with it. And he got a job with the local police department. He had to start at the bottom, but for the first time in years, he woke up before his alarm. Dave was the same guy. Same wife, family, church, city, exercise routine, coffee shop, lawn to mow, dentist. All that changed was his job. What he got up to do every day.

I would argue it’s because what we do is central to our humanness.

What are you giving your life to? When you wake up every morning, what is it you do with your small ration of oxygen?

What I’m getting at is this: in the church we need to talk about all of life.

What it means to be a disciple of Jesus at church and at our job, school, gym, coffee shop, on our day off, when we go shopping or to the theater or on a date, and

so on. This means we have to talk about work, because it consumes the lio...

Why did God make humanity? “So that they may rule.” In Hebrew, the original language, it’s even clearer. The text can be translated, “God made human in order to rule.”8 You and I were created to rule over the earth. That’s our meaning, our purpose — it’s why we exist.

In Genesis’s vision of humanness, we don’t work to live; we live to work. It flat out says we were created to rule — to make something of God’s world.

In the beginning . . . God created . . . everything.

God is an artist, a designer, a creative . . . He’s an engineer, a builder . . . An ecologist, a zoologist, an expert in horticulture . . . A musician, a poet . . . A king, a shepherd . . . But above all, he’s a worker, and a vigorous one at that.

We hear this language all the time, but what does it actually mean? To be made in the image of God?

The phrase selem elohim, meaning “image of god,” was used all over the ancient Near East, but not just for anybody — for the king.

Think about it: God could have made humans from the dust, like he did with Adam, but instead he chose to work through marriage and family.

He could have put Adam and Eve into a city, like he’s going to do in the New Jerusalem, but instead he chose to put the proto-humans in the Garden and give them a shot at starting a civilization from scratch.

Why? Because God is looking for partners.

So we humans are a mixed bag. We have a great capacity — more than we know — to rule in a way that is life-giving for the people around us and the place we call home, or to rule in such a way that we exploit the earth itself and rob people of an environment where they can thrive. This was God’s risk. His venture. His experiment.

Paul’s basic idea is that because of Adam’s disobedience, we all die, but because of Jesus’ obedience, we all live. But in this statement, he takes it to the next level. Not only do we live, but we “reign in life.” Whoa . . . slow this down.

“Reign” is king language. It’s Genesis language. “Reign” is what we were supposed to do all along, before Adam mucked it all up.

So many people think of work as the curse. I hear it all the time, I hate my job. Work is the curse. But nothing could be further from the truth. Work is cursed, yes — more on that later. But work itself is the exact opposite — a blessing.

A blessing in Genesis is a weighty, strong thing — it’s a gift from the Creator God to generate life, fertility, and well-being. And what is God’s blessing over humans? Work.

You were made to do good— to mirror and mimic what God is like to the world.

To stand at the interface between the Creator and his creation, implementing God’s creative, generous blessing over all the earth and giving voice to the creation’s worship.

Here’s what you have to understand: the Garden was dynamic, not static. Put another way, creation was a project, not a product. The Garden was designed to go somewhere.9 God’s vision was for the order and artistry and beauty of Eden to spread out over the whole earth — and human was the one entrusted with that job, to “fill the earth” with the Garden’s reality.

And all of Paul’s language builds up to this staggering line: “For we are God’s coworkers.”

This is a provocative metaphor. Most of us think of ourselves as God’s employees, not his coworkers. As if we’re working for God. And there’s some truth in that. Paul loves to call himself God’s servant. But if we’re God’s coworkers, that means we’re not only working for God, we’re also working with God. He’s back to the imagery of partners. What’s the difference between an employee and a partner? In one word — ownership.

When you go to work tomorrow, remember, you’re not just a designer with a clothing label; you’re a partner with God, taking the human project forward.

You are a modern day Adam or Eve. This world is what’s left of the Garden. And your job is to take all the raw materials that are spread out in front of you, to work it, to take care of it, to rule, to subdue, to wrestle, to fight, to explore, and to take the creation project forward as an act of service and worship to the God who made you.

Vocation is one of those old, tired, outdated, overused, cliché, brilliant, stunning, essential, captivating words we swim in all the time but don’t really realize how deep it goes.

Your vocation is your calling in life. Now, the word vocation isn’t used in the Scriptures, so there’s no right way to define

it.

myself with self-esteem issues. But for now, just know this: calling or vocation or whatever you want to call it isn’t limited to “spiritual”-type jobs and careers. It’s as wide as humanity itself.

I

honestly think that we’re more likely to figure out our calling from a four-letter Myers-Briggs label than we are from a burning bush. Although, if I had the option, I would go for the bush every time.

But so much of finding your calling is about finding out who you are and what you alone can contribute to the world. The word vocatio can also be translated voice. Man,...

Finding your calling is about finding your voice — what cuts over all the din and drone of the other seven-billion-plus people on earth. The tune and tone that only you can bring to the table.

Calling isn’t something you choose,

it’s something you unearth. You excavate. You dig out....

was brought up in a culture that essentially said, John Mark, you can do anything you put your mind to. If you work hard enough, if you believe in yourself, if you’re patient, you can do anything. This is such a middle-class-and-above American way to think. Nobody in the developing world would ever talk like that.

one of the reasons we’re so disillusioned with the economy right now is because, somehow, this idea of “I can be anything I want” is bred into us by our ancestry. And it’s not all bad. It gave me the courage to dream and ideate and step out in life. But it’s also dangerous because, sadly, it’s not true. I can’t be anything I want to be, no matter how hard I work or how much I believe in myself.

Now, at some point, we just need to be thankful for a job. The economy is in and out of the tank, and some of us have it pretty tough. And it’s also true that Jesus is with us no matter what we do, and what he called “life to the full”3 isn’t dependent on having our dream job. At all. Which is great, since billions of people see work simply as a way to survive.

all I’m saying is what we do should grow out of who we are.

But burnout isn’t always the result of giving too much; sometimes it’s the result of trying to give something you don’t have to give in the first place.

God’s made my calling clear — I’m just a voice. I’m supposed to speak vision to the church, teach the Scriptures, and write a little bit. That’s it. That’s what I believe God put me on this earth to do. Waking up to this was brutal.

We need to learn to embrace our potential and our limitations. Because both of them are signposts, pointing us forward into God’s calling on our life.

My mentor Gerry’s advice to young people is this: Figure out what you love, and then see if you can make a living at it.

Asking this question is a luxury that most of the world doesn’t have. If you’re born in Uganda, where my daughter is from, you don’t think about doing what you love; you think about doing anything you can to survive. But in the West — because of our staggering level of wealth, we have a chance to follow our heart. It’s crazy to me that some people don’t at least try.

It takes time to figure out our gifting. And then years to develop it. Most of us don’t really know when we’re young. So experiment.

You’ll do some things and you won’t come alive, and people all around you will say, Umm, maybe you should give something else a shot.

That’s okay. Celebrate it. Every time you fail, throw a party — you just took another step forward in learning what you’re not called to

do.