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

by John Mark Comer

Just like Israel, we forget that Pharaoh is dead. There are no more slave drivers. No more quota. We’re free. We don’t have to work seven days a week. Our value is no longer tied to what we accomplish. The goal of work isn’t to make money to buy more stuff; it’s to cooperate with the Creator God in world making, and then to take a step back and delight in our Garden-like world.

YHWH is not a workaholic. He’s a Sabbath-keeping, Sabbath-giving, Sabbath-commanding God. A God who works, and a God who rests.

in the land, but they were still in exile. And everybody knew they were in exile for breaking God’s commandments. So the Pharisees’ basic philosophy was this: if Torah-breaking got us into this mess, then it stands to reason that Torah-keeping will get us out of it. So they were OCD about the Torah.

The Sabbath isn’t a cold, arbitrary rule we have to obey. It’s a life-giving art form that we get to practice.

Jesus is the embodiment of the Sabbath. He’s the seventh day in flesh and blood. We can come to him and find rest, not just on the Sabbath, but all week long.

We were made to work, and we will work forever. And before you get sad about that, realize it’s in a world where the curse has been undone. The “painful toil” is gone. We will not “labor in vain.” Our work will be exciting, fun, challenging, rewarding, fascinating, energizing, significant, and custom fit for who we are.

the story doesn’t end with us going away to heaven, but rather, with heaven’s invasion of Earth. We see Jesus and his followers who have died coming back from heaven to “rule over the earth.”

our eschatology shapes our ethics.

And how we view the end — the goal, the climax, what this whole story is leading up to, shapes our ethics, how we live today.

We make it our goal to acclimate and tune our body and our soul to the world we came from, to live at Eden’s soothing pace. But we also make it our goal to anticipate and act out the coming world, to live as we will forever — eating, drinking, and just enjoying God’s presence.

So what Paul thinks resurrection means is that our “work” and “labor” are not in vain. They’re not all for nothing. They matter.

all this talk about the future, about resurrection and the age to come, should have a tectonic, pivotal, inspiring effect on our work in the here and now.

It needs to be said that good work is worthwhile even if it’s just for this age, with no bearing on the age to come at all. Whatever it is you do — cooking, building, teaching, writing, mothering, project managing, beehive keeping — if you do it as an act of worship to God and an expression of love and service to humanity, that’s enough.

Our work in this life is practice for our work in the coming life.

God is looking for people he can rule the world with. Right now, we are becoming those kinds of people.

You will take the person you become with you into God’s future. And who you become is your most valuable asset.

Some of the good work we do will actually last into God’s new world.

“What you do in the present — by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself — will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”13

Know that all good work done in this age will be rewarded in the age to come.

it’s more work and more responsibility in God’s new world. And that should excite you! Curse-free, exhilarating, satisfying work. And responsibility, a sense that what you do is important in the grand scheme of things.

Because if you’re faithful with your one mina now, then in the world to come, you will rule. You will finally get to do the kind of work you love. In the meantime, don’t give up. Don’t give in. You’re headed for an “inheritance.”

We are the people of the future in the present.

And the hope is that as we do whatever it is we do, people will see our work, and, shivering in the cold, will come a little closer, listen to the music, and maybe, just maybe, start to see that in the middle of all the sorrow and emptiness and trauma of this life, something new is brewing, seeping up through the ground, breaking in. Or as a teacher I follow once said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

You need dreams as large as Jesus’ vision of the kingdom. A kingdom where greatness has been radically redefined around a crucified Messiah. Where children are the guests of honor. Where servants lead and leaders serve. Where the last are first.