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

by John Mark Comer

Why is that? How could something as mundane and ordinary as a job change everything for Dave? 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 we do flows from who we are. Both matter.

In Genesis, God says, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule . . . There it is. Staring us in the face all these years.

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.

He doesn’t hate work; in fact, he seems to really enjoy it. And instead of creating humanity to offload all his work because it’s beneath him, the story opens with God himself working to create a world for humanity, a place for us to experience and enjoy his presence. Humanity isn’t created as cheap slave labor to do his bidding, but rather as his co-creators, his partners.

In Hebrew there’s a play on words. Adam (the man) is made from the adamah (the ground). It’s a poetic way of saying that human has a symbiotic relationship with the earth itself. We’re made from the dust. Which is why the first human profession was gardening . . .

But abad is also the same word used all over the Hebrew Bible for worship. Interesting. So work and worship aren’t two separate ideas. They are connected at the hip. They are two translations of the same word.5 It’s tragic that we think of worship as a few songs at church every Sunday. That is worship — of course. But in a Genesis-shaped worldview — all of life is worship.

The next word we need to take a closer look at is shamar, and it’s even more interesting. It’s usually translated as “take care,” and that’s spot-on. It means to watch over, protect, guard, police, and stand up for the creation.

Shamar can be translated “cultivate” or “develop” or “draw out something’s potential.”

Tim Keller’s definition of work. He puts it this way: 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

Did you know there’s no word for spiritual in the Hebrew language? Hebrew is the language of the first three quarters of the Bible — what we call the Old Testament. Look up the word spiritual in Genesis to Malachi— the Bible used by Jesus. It’s not there. Why? Because in a Hebrew worldview, all of life is spiritual.

There’s a specific way that the Creator wants us to navigate all this unspiritual, secular, run-of-the-mill stuff. It’s almost like it matters.

New Testament, the word spiritual is really only used by Paul. In his writings it means “animated by the Holy Spirit.” And for Paul, every facet of our life should be spiritual.2

Jesus we have a dual vocation. Not one, but two callings. The original calling — to rule over the earth. To make culture. And a new calling — to make disciples. To help people come back into relationship with the Creator, so that they can rule over the creation. Not just so they can get forgiveness and go to heaven when they die. But so that they can come back from heaven and rule over the earth as they were always supposed to

This means we need to learn how to value beauty for beauty’s sake. Maybe even for God’s sake.

How do you glorify God? In how you work. We’re the image of God, right? So our job is to mirror and mimic what God is like to the people around us. To show the world what God is like. What does that look like? Well, here are a few ideas . . . God is hard working, so we should be hard working. God is joyful and eager and proactive, so we should be cheerful and show up ten minutes early for our shift and volunteer when something difficult needs to be done. God is honest and true, so we should be full of integrity — even when it means less money or no promotion.

think of that line in Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders.”15 So when we live well — when we work and rest — in a way that is quiet and hardworking and productive, and we don’t grumble or mouth off or screw around or look at social media on work time — we “win the respect of outsiders.” Put another way, people see God’s presence and beauty in how we live. Put still another way, we glorify God.

To borrow from the language of Jesus, you gotta figure what the “work the Father gave you to do” is. And then you need to learn the art of saying no. To good things. A smart man once said, “Good is the enemy of best.”17 Some of us end up doing a lot of good things, but we never get around to doing the best thing. Because when you get sucked into the tyranny of the urgent (what a great phrase, by the way), you put off what’s really important. When you say yes to everything, you say yes to nothing. The work the Father gave you to do gets put on the back burner, at the bottom of the to-do pile. This is a tragedy because you’re robbing the world of your much-needed contribution.

My point is that as human beings, we have this slant to look to our work for significance we can only find in God. When we uncouple our work from God, work becomes a sort of god in and of itself. It’s called workaholism. Work can be just as addictive as any narcotic. Even if it’s hard and difficult and frustrating at times, that sense of accomplishment and accumulation, that sense of another foot higher on your own personal tower of Babel — is a buzz a lot of us crave. Technology has made it easier than ever to become a work addict. We don’t have to get in the car or on the subway and go to work anymore; we just have to grab our phone or pop open our laptop and the office comes to us. It’s like slipping a needle into a vein on your arm — you know it’s dangerous, but it feels so good. But workaholism is more than an addiction; it’s a twisted kind of worship, a search for meaning and purpose in what we do. That’s the insidious and self-deceiving thing about work — it can be too much of a good thing. Maybe what you do is good, even great, it’s for human flourishing, it’s vital to the world, but why you’re doing it is all off.

One person works hard as an act of worship to God and an expression of love and service to the world. Another person works hard because they are subconsciously thinking, If I can just close this deal or make this sale or get this promotion or make it as a novelist or get recognition as a _______, then I’ll be happy. It’s Babel all over again. The human quest to “build a tower to the heavens,” to search for identity and significance in our work.

Maybe for you, it’s not work that’s your tower of Babel, it’s rest.

“Live for the weekend” is your motto. Remember what we said earlier, for so many people work is a means to an end. It’s something we do, so we can go do something else. The goal is to make as much money as possible, with as little effort and energy as possible, so that we can get off work and go play. Go do whatever it is we love. And just like work, a lot of people look to rest or play or leisure for a sense of identity.

We’re starving for a sense of identity, and even more, for belonging in a community. This desire isn’t bad, at all. It’s latent in all of us from birth because it was put there by God. But when we search for identity and belonging in what we do for fun, instead of in God and his people, we turn music or sport or fashion or fishing or whatever it is we love into a little-g god, and we come up empty every time.

There’s an entire book in the Bible written about this. It’s called Ecclesiastes, and it was written, ironically, by a king. A ruler. A guy who started out really good — as a potential replacement for Adam himself — but ended really, really bad. He started to hunt for satisfaction everywhere but in God himself. Ecclesiastes is basically his rant on how “everything is meaningless” and he can’t find what he’s searching for “under the sun” (a euphemism for this life apart from God). He tries everything. Education, laughter, fun, pleasure, hedonism, success, wealth — everything. Including work.

We can’t find happiness or satisfaction or whatever it is that we’re searching for in work or in rest, apart from God. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news. What if God set it up this way? What if this was all God’s idea? What if he’s up to something? After all, he was the one who cursed the ground. We sinned, true, but he cursed the ground. Why would he do that? Why would a loving, generous Creator curse his own creation? Is he cruel? Sadistic? Psychopathic? Just plain mean? 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.

I’m not a machine. I can’t work seven days a week. I’m a human. All I can do is work for six days and then rest for one, just like the God whose image I bear.

The rabbis make a big deal about the “principle of first mention,” which, put simply, means the first time you read a word in the Scriptures it’s kind of like a definition. It sets the stage for how you read the word all the way through. Did you know that the first time you read the word qadosh in the Bible is right here? And what does God make holy? Time.

So the Sabbath is holy, but it’s also something we have to keep holy. It’s easy to profane, to desecrate. It’s easy for it to just become another day in the rat race. Another day to fall into the pattern — work, buy, sell, repeat. We’re to keep it holy — to guard it, watch over it, treat it like a delicate flower in a New York subway.

Moses calls the Sabbath a gift.10 That’s exactly what it is.

There is a God, and I’m not him.

One day a week we cease all work — not just the work we get paid for. We rest even from the thought of labor.

Enough is enough. I do not have to work more. I do not have to buy more. I do not have to sell more. I do not have to move up in the company. I do not have to earn my Father’s love. I don’t have anything to prove. I do not have to get a perfect score. I do not need another stamp on my passport. I do not need another bay in my garage. I do not need to be younger or more beautiful or have flatter abs (although, man, that would be nice). I don’t need to have my kids in ballet or soccer all year long. I don’t need to make everybody happy. I don’t need to get everything I want.

Run errands or catch up around the house. Talk about stuff that’s heavy or sad or divisive — there are six other days in the week for that. Talk about stuff we need to get done. We rest from even the thought of work.

did you know that almost all of Jesus’ healings take place on the Sabbath? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Why? Because the Sabbath is a day for healing.

The Sabbath is all about intimacy with God. And healing is a sign of God’s love for you. What better time for Jesus to heal than on the Sabbath?

Do your work as an expression of love and service, ultimately to God, and then to your neighbor. Maybe you’ll make a ton of money, or maybe you’ll just have enough. Maybe you’ll become a household name all over the world. The odds are, you won’t. Maybe you’ll see your reward this side of resurrection, or maybe not until the next. But none of that matters. That’s not why you do it. You do it because God made you to do it. Because it’s good. Because it has a bearing on this world and the world to come. Because when all is said and done, it matters.