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

by John Mark Comer

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.

“to actively partner with God in taking the world somewhere.”

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 made food fall from the sky, like he did with manna in the exodus, but instead he chose to work through farming and agriculture and trade.

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.

For starters it means that your work is a core part of your humanness. You are made in the image of a working God. God is king over the world, and you’re a king, a queen — royalty — ruling on his behalf. Gathering up the creation’s praise and somehow pushing it back to God himself.

Secondly, this means we need to think of work as a good thing. When God was done working, he sat back and said, This is really good. That’s how we should view our work.

The author is saying that Eden is made up of raw materials. It’s spilling over with pent-up potentiality. Everything you need to make a civilization is there; all you have to do is to cultivate it, to draw it out. But that’s going to take some work.

work is “rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish.”7

Because the Garden was never supposed to stay a garden; it was always supposed to become a garden city.

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.

My point is that civilization isn’t a Wild West with every man for himself — it’s a web of billions and billions of people all working together for a better world in a spirit of collaboration and interdependency — each one contributing something unique.

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.

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.

If we fight the image of God in us — even if we succeed in the short run — it will come back to eat us alive.

Because with each success, and with each so-called failure, you’re getting a clearer sense of your calling.

In Hebrew the word for “glory” is kavod. Literally it means “weighty” or “heavy.”

Our job is to make the invisible God visible — to mirror and mimic what he is like to the world. We can glorify God by doing our work in such a way that we make the invisible God visible by what we do and how we do it.

In the same way, when we see creation, we see behind the creation and get a picture of what the Creator is like.

Sometimes in our quest against injustice and greed and waste and in our passion to steward the wealth of the West in a kingdom-of-God-like way, it’s easy to overreact and devalue the things that God himself values, like art or beauty.

Because we’re made in the image of God. Here to make the invisible God visible. You’re the priest of your office or classroom or home or job site. You’re God’s representative.

Put another way, people see God’s presence and beauty in how we live.

— as we stare deep into God’s presence and beauty, call that worship, or call that getting up early to watch the sunrise — we are transformed into his image.

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.

To focus, we need to know what we’re called by God to do, and what we’re not called to do. Who we are, and who we aren’t.

Here’s my takeaway: be yourself. The real, true you. The one God himself created. Don’t try to be somebody else.

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?’ ”16

Our job isn’t to fit into some mold or prove something to the world; it’s to unlock who God’s made us to be, and then go be it.

To borrow from the language of Jesus, you gotta figure what the “work the Father gave you to do” is.

the best way to love and serve others with our job was just to be really good at our jobs.

Because I’m not called to be as good as or better than Mike. I’m just supposed to do a good job at being myself. To take my background, experience, education, brains, skill, or lack of skill, go to work every day, and do the best I can.

And getting good at what you do takes even longer. Years. No, decades. A lifetime of learning and training and education and practice and self-discipline and not giving up on the pursuit of excellence as an act of abad, service and worship.

Do one thing. And do one thing well. And do that one thing well as an act of service and love for the world and to the glory of God.

so many of us look to our work — whatever it is we do — for our identity and even significance. And this isn’t all bad. Who we are and what we do are inseparable, as I said before. But when we define who we are by what we do and we’re stuck in a job or life we don’t like, we’re on dangerous ground.

Now, whether your god of choice is work or rest or some amalgamation of the two, both are on a collision course with disillusionment.

our dreams will probably take way longer than we’re expecting. Years, if not decades of straight-up hard work.

“Happiness equals reality minus expectations.”13 That’s a scientific way of saying that we all have expectations. If you do better than your expectations, then the odds are you will be happy. But if your life doesn’t measure up to what you were hoping for, then the odds are, no matter how successful you are, you will be unhappy.

we should expect our work to be a mixed bag — good and bad. 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.

the curse drives us to God. If it weren’t for the curses — on both the family and the field — we would look to whatever it is we do for work or rest, and we would find it. And nothing could be more disastrous for the world than God’s image bearers finding identity and belonging and even satisfaction apart from him.

for followers of Jesus, Eden is where we come from, and it’s also where we’re going.

Work and rest live in a symbiotic relationship. If you don’t learn how to rest well, you will never learn how to work well (and vice versa). After all, the opposite of work isn’t rest — it’s sleep. Work and rest are friends, not enemies.

Because the Sabbath is a day for menuha— for the celebration of life in God’s very good world.

But this God doesn’t have a holy space; he has a holy time —the Sabbath. This God isn’t found in the world of space — in a temple, on top of a mountain, at a spring, around a statue or a monument. He’s found in the world of time.

The Creator God is inviting us to join him in this rhythm, this interplay of work and rest. And when we don’t accept his invitation, we reap the consequences. Fatigue. Burnout. Anxiety. Depression. Busyness. Starved relationships.

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

The point is that there is a way the Creator set the creation up to thrive. A way that God set you up to thrive. And when we Sabbath, we tap into God’s rhythm for human flourishing.

Even though the Sabbath is about imitation of the God who works and then rests, it’s also a day to remember that we’re not God. We take a day off, and the world gets along just fine without us.

At Sinai, the Sabbath is an art form. It’s about tapping into the rhythm of creation; in Deuteronomy, the Sabbath is an act of defiance against Pharaoh and his slave drivers.

At Sinai it’s a way of saying yes to God and his world; in Deuteronomy it’s a way of saying no to Egypt and its system. At Sinai it’s an invitation to join God in his delight; in Deuteronomy it’s a warning to stay away from Egypt’s way of life.

Pharaoh is alive and well. He’s that guilty feeling in your gut, that voice in the back of your head, screaming at you, “Work harder, work faster, work longer. Produce, produce, produce. You’re only as good as your daily quota.