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

by John Mark Comer

Yes, but do you like what you do? Do you wake up in the morning with a sense of anticipation? Of excitement for the day ahead?

what we do is central to our humanness.

What are you giving your life to?

What we do flows from who we are. Both matter.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

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.

Rest here doesn’t mean God was tired or worn down. It’s an act of delight. God is enjoying the fruit of his labor.

We are God’s partners. The language that’s used in Genesis is the “image of God.”

But where Adam and Abraham and Israel and you and I all failed, Jesus didn’t. He did what Adam was supposed to do but couldn’t. What Israel was supposed to do but couldn’t. What we were supposed to do but couldn’t.25

When you get up tomorrow morning and go to your job or school or whatever it is you do with your life, you’re not just earning money to pay the bills or learning microbiology or raising kids or serving at your local church or nonprofit. You’re being human. You’re ruling over the earth.

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.

every human on the planet is bursting with raw, uncut potential. You are bursting with raw, uncut potential. You have the blood of royalty in your veins.

Theologians call this the “cultural mandate,” because it’s a command to make culture. Fascinating. Adam and Eve are commanded to make culture.

This word subdue seems to indicate there’s an inherent wildness to the world. It’s untamed. Out of control. In desperate need of ruling.

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 . . . “Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the East, in Eden . . .”

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.

I love 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

A kingdom where God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven,” where the glass wall between earth and heaven is so thin and clear and translucent that you don’t even remember it’s there. That’s the kind of world we’re called to make.

The writer John is saying that the future is the return to the past. It’s the return to Eden. But notice, something has changed. It’s not a garden anymore; it’s a Garden-like city.

Because if you’re an employee, you’re only there to get a paycheck, and you get the same pay whether it’s busy or slow. You just wanna put in your time and go home. But if you’re a partner, if you have ownership, then everything is different. You work the same job, but harder. The same shift, but longer. And you’re on top of the world. When the door opens and a dozen people tumble in with somewhere to be in a hurry, you think to yourself, Sweet.

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.

Your vocation is your calling in life.

Calling isn’t something you choose, like who you marry or what house you buy or what car you buy; it’s something you unearth. You excavate. You dig out. And you discover.

I can’t be anything I want to be, no matter how hard I work or how much I believe in myself. All I can be is me. Who the Creator made John Mark to be. 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.

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.

What are you passionate about? What makes you angry? Sad? Happy? Energized? What keeps you up at night? Maybe you’re quiet — what’s that one thing you always like to talk about?

What would you do with your life if you didn’t get paid and you didn’t need the money?

Figure out what you love, and then see if you can make a living at it.

You’ll do some things and come alive, and people all around you will say, Wow, you’re so good at that. You should do more of it. And then you’ll do other things — like basketball — and your ball will shoot off your longboard-of-a-foot and ricochet into a neighbor’s window and you’ll have to run and hide. I’m just saying. 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.

There’s nothing like that feeling of being good at something. Not arrogant or annoying or stuck up, but that Genesis 1 kind of “God saw all he had made and it was very good” feeling. It’s that feeling on Friday afternoon when you look back at your workweek and smile.

I’ll have this weird out-of-body sensation when I think, I was made for this. That’s a feeling we should all have on a semiregular basis.

Most importantly, is it something that God smiles on? After all, his opinion of your work matters more than anybody else’s. After a hard day’s labor, can you hear God whisper in your ear, Well done?

And then just start living. Follow your heart. Don’t be afraid to try stuff. Don’t take failure too seriously. For that matter, don’t take success too seriously either.

Maybe for you it’s not design; it’s a really good meal or a concert or laughing around a table with friends on a warm summer night — but there are moments of awareness. When all of a sudden we become acutely aware of the Creator’s realness, nearness, and goodness.

After the people see God’s kavod, what’s the response? The exact same response as when I wake up to the sunrise or walk by my credenza — worship and gratitude for who God is and what God is like.

How do any of us glorify God with our work if it’s not overtly Christian? Well, here’s my take: we’re the image of God, remember? 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.

As people made in God’s image, we can join him in this ongoing creative work. As his partners, we can reshape the raw materials of his world in such a way that people see the beauty behind the beauty.

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.

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. Usually God’s calling is a short list — just a few things. In my case, I’m called to lead my church, teach the Scriptures, and bring my family along for the ride. That’s what I’m saying yes to, which means, I have to say no all the time.

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

frees you up to do that one thing well— this, in turn, is what opens up doors to do more of whatever it is you do so well. 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.

If you were a craftsman a thousand years ago, why would you put all that effort and energy into something nobody would even see? Maybe because God would see it. Maybe he would even value it.

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.

When I see something that is brilliant it wrecks me in the best sort of way. I am also constantly returning to this idea that we were created with the ability to create and that makes our God the most generous of all. I’m humbled after I complete every new project, and as I stand there with a big silly grin on my face, I feel his presence and approval.”

we have this slant to look to our work for significance we can only find in God.

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.

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.

Eventually, most of our work will be washed away by history.