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

by John Mark Comer

Nothing about creation says that God is a tightfisted, utilitarian, bean-counting pragmatist; God is a lavish, opulent, extravagant artist, and creation is his beauty on display.

Some of us don’t have much control over what we do. We take a job, and then we do whatever the boss tells us to do. You would love to make something that’s beautiful and sustainable and good for the earth and goes back into the local economy and does something about the plight of poverty or illiteracy or malaria in Nigeria — but these decisions are made a million miles above you on the corporate ladder. You sit in your cubicle or at your counter five days a week and do exactly what you’re told. How do you glorify God? In how you work.

after the human rebellion, everything changed. We still bear God’s image, but it’s somehow been warped and twisted out of shape. It’s still there, in every human on the planet, but for some people, it’s beyond recognition. The good news is, as Jesus and the Spirit do their healing, saving work, we are transformed back into the image of the God who made us. And that image is glory in Paul’s thinking. They are synonymous.

The early church father Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”17

each of us has a vocation, a calling from God, a way that God wired us, somebody to be and something to do — because the two merge in perfect symmetry.

Discipleship is about learning how to become a good human being. And how to live into both your callings, to make disciples and to create culture.

Yes, Jesus was the template for what Godness looks like. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus of Nazareth. But the mystery of the incarnation is that he was also the template for what real, true humanness looks like.

If you want to know what a human being, fully awake and alive, ruling over the world as a conduit for the Creator God’s love looks like in flesh and blood — then look at Jesus.

We all come into this world with an end in mind, a destiny, a calling.

The legendary Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said this: “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’

When you get that amazing opportunity that you don’t really have time for — say no. When you plan out your week — say no. When you sit down in January to map out the coming year — say no. And say no to good things. You gotta be ruthless. Not because you’re a selfish jerk and you don’t care about anybody, but because you know who you are and you have to do the Father’s work.

There’s a line in the Hebrew wisdom literature that I love . . . “Do you see someone skilled in their work? They will serve before kings; they will not serve before officials of low rank.”18 When you’re good at what you do, you end up in front of kings.

Dorothy Sayers, this spunky, rebellious British writer from half a century ago, said that the best way to serve others with our work is to “serve the work.” What she meant was that the best way to love and serve others with our job was just to be really good at our jobs.

If you’re really good at whatever it is you do, you don’t need to tell the rest of us. We’ll know. Beautiful things don’t ask for attention. God is looking for people he can give more “grace” to. People who can handle grace, with grace.

What if God’s people were known as the best carpenters and the best CEOs and the most educated teachers and the

most creative artists and the most ingenious writers and as the most humble, self-effacing, down-to-earth, servant-hearted, loving people around? I think that would make God very happy.

Remember, Adam and Eve were called to “rule” over “every living creature that moves on the ground.”1 But instead, in a catastrophic inversion of the created order, an animal — that Adam himself named!— ruled over them.

Adam was supposed to “take care” of the Garden — to guard it and watch over it — but instead he let evil incarnate right into the center of Eden, and he abused its most precious resource — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Work is cursed. And so is childbearing. That’s different. Curse here doesn’t mean a voodoo spell. It means that in the wake of humans’ sin, there are far-reaching, irreversible, toxic changes to the experience of family and field.

Both childbearing and gardening are now called “painful labor.” And the language of “thorns and thistles” is symbolic for all culture making. All human effort for civilization is now cursed with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction.

This is interesting. The heavens are where God is. So they are looking to this building project — to work — for a pseudo-spirituality, a sense of meaning and purpose that can only be found in God himself. And all this is “so that we may make a name for ourselves.” They’re looking to work for identity and status. As a rating system to see how they measure up to the people around them.

Hubris always leads to strife and in-fighting and eventually implosion. In the end, “The LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.”

When we uncouple our work from God, work becomes a sort of god in and of itself. It’s called workaholism.

But workaholism is more than an addiction; it’s a twisted kind of worship, a search for meaning and purpose in what we do.

Work, because no matter how great your job is, it’s never enough. Every time you cut down a weed in the garden, three more take its place. Work is a to-do list that never ends. We constantly feel like we’re behind. This is exhausting as the years of our life tick down. And rest, because whatever

All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.”9 Now, before you get all depressed and cry, keep in mind that this is a picture of work “under the sun.” This is what work looks like if we do it apart from God. Hopefully, our entire outlook on work is drastically different. But still, we can all relate to the king’s angst at some level.

Who knows, there’s an off chance it might even make it onto a bestseller list (okay, probably not). But even if that were to happen, in a century or two nobody will remember it, and in another century or two it will literally turn to dust.

If I’m in it for myself, and if this life is all there is, then the king is right. This is all meaningless. Thankfully, I’m not just in it for myself (just partially for myself, ouch), and this life is not all there is. Resurrection is on the horizon. But still, in spite of that, at times it does feel a bit meaningless. Or at least, like a bit of a letdown.

But even if we are successful, here’s a few things to note

First, our dreams will probably take way longer than we’re expecting.

There’s a reason patience is fast becoming a thing of the past. It’s brutally hard.

Second, other people will do a lot better than us. No matter how smart or hard working or gifted or charismatic we are, there will always be somebody better than us.

We should expect some of our dreams to come true and to feel a bit of letdown.

We should expect work to give us a sense of meaning and purpose and to be regularly frustrated by whatever it is we do. We can’t find happiness or satisfaction or whatever it is that we’re searching for in work or in rest, apart from God.

What if God set it up this way? What if this was all God’s idea?

Here’s my theory; I think the curse is a blessing in camouflage. It’s God’s love in disguise. His mercy incognito.14 Because the curse drives us to God.

And nothing could be more disastrous for the world than God’s image bearers finding identity and belonging and even satisfaction apart from him.

Because for followers of Jesus, Eden is where we come from, and it’s also where we’re going. But before we get to our destination, we need to make one more stop first

Sabbath isn’t just a day to not work; it’s a day to delight in what one Hebrew poet called “the work of our hands.”3 To delight in the life you’ve carved out in partnership with God,

to delight in the world around you, and to delight in God himself.

There are two fascinating words here that we need to drill down on: blessed and holy. The word bless is barak in Hebrew, pronounced like the president. A barak, or a blessing, in the creation story is a life-giving ability to procreate — to make more life. God baraked three times in Genesis. First, God blessed the “living creatures” (the animal kingdom) and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth.”

Sadly, a lot of us think of holiness in the negative — about what we don’t do.

Holiness also has a positive side. It’s about what we do.

On a day off you don’t work for your employer, but you still work. You grocery shop, go to the bank, mow the lawn, work on the remodel project, chip away at that sci-fi novel you’re writing . . . On the Sabbath, you rest, and you worship. That’s it. That’s why Moses was teaching the Israelites to get ready

Here’s what I’m saying: there is a rhythm to this world. For six days we rule and subdue and work and draw out and labor and bleed and wrestle and fight with the ground. But then we take a step back, and for twenty-four hours, we sabbath, we enjoy the fruit of our labor, we delight in God and his world, we celebrate life, we rest, and we worship.

The Creator God is inviting us to join him in this rhythm, this interplay of work and rest.

Lots of people argue that we’re “free” from the Sabbath because it was a part of the Torah, or Law. As if it was a legalistic rule we were stuck with until Jesus. What a tragic misunderstanding.

It is true that we’re no longer under the Torah, and it’s also true that the Sabbath is the only one of the Ten Commandments not repeated in the New Testament.9 But even so, the Sabbath still stands as wisdom.

There isn’t a command in the New Testament to eat food or drink water or sleep eight hours a night. That’s just wisdom, how the Creator set ...

You can skip the Sabbath — it’s not sin. It’s just stupid. You can eat concrete — it’...