(My post this morning got me to thinking about an article I wrote several months ago and never published. Here's encouragement that your work matters to God!)
Maybe you bowed your head for a quick word of thanks over your bowl of cereal this morning. But have you ever thought of all the people God employed to get those flakes on your spoon?
He used farmers to plant and cultivate. He used employees at companies that supply the equipment farmers need, and bankers who arranged the financing for these businesses. He used scientists who check the food for purity. He used plant operators who processed the grain into crispy flakes. He used manufacturers of of the trucks that get the boxed-up cereal to market, and the truckers who drive, and the truck stop operators who make their routes possible. He used the engineers who designed the highway, and the laborers who laid down all those miles of road work. He even used the humble pallet makers who hammered together sturdy wood strips to make it easier for the fork lift drivers (whom God also used) to unload the boxes of cereal at the delivery dock of your grocery store. And then there's the high school student who stocked the shelves and the clerk who scanned your selection at check out.
God used a lot of people to get breakfast to your table this morning.
Your work, too, is a vital part of this vast, complex system God directs to meet the needs of this world. Because of that, God is as interested in the quality of your work as he is the quality of your prayers. Life in God's kingdom is more than a daily quiet time and weekend attendance at a church service. Life in God's kingdom also means
drilling supply wells,
maintaining aircraft,
administering medicine,
keeping a building clean and sanitary,
laying floor tile,
selling products,
teaching math,
programming radio air time,
working with spreadsheets--
Well, you get the picture. Your work matters to God.
What I want to know is why we're not hearing this more often in pulpits, conferences, and Christian media. I attended a high-energy conference with my church's college students where they were challenged to settle for nothing less than changing the world--which was then defined only in terms of starting or partnering with service organizations that stop human trafficking. And it's not just the young that are given the implication that investing your life in a business is not a life that counts. I attended a breakfast meeting with several of my middle-aged church members introducing a ministry helping people at mid-life move "from success to significance." I left the meeting with the impression that your life as, say, a successful CFO, was not significant until you left the business world to start or support an African orphanage.
I'm still waiting for the conference speaker who will stand in front of a convention center packed with amped-up college students and make 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 his text.
Maybe you haven't run across the passage before. Paul wrote (NIV84), "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."
I love how Paul combined the words "ambition" and "quiet" in that text. To our minds, the words don't belong together, but the Apostle regarded them as a perfect match. "Be driven by this passion," he said. What passion? "Be ambitious to settle down into stable self-sustaining labor."
Because our pulpits and our conferences don't know what to do with texts like this, we don't have an answer for my friend, a recent college graduate, who placed the following note in the offering plate one Sunday. She referenced a peer who had started a ministry to fight human trafficking, and wondered whether her own life and work would count as much:
You asked me this morning, 'How are you doing?' I replied, 'Okay' with a smile. But honestly, I'm not okay at all....Natalie James [name changed], in simple terms, is amazing! She has accomplished so much, and has realized her passion and goes for what God is calling her to do. I look at her as a role model on Earth. Amazing is the least of her....[But] there is nothing special about me, so how do I stand out as a disciple of Christ? How do I grab onto something spectacular that God wants me to do?
I grieve that my friend wonders if her chosen profession (in the field of agriculture) is a rather ho-hum concession prize for those who didn't make the cut to be world changers.
But the longer you acquaint yourself with the biblical view of work, the more you'll see its value. The opening chapters of Genesis present creation as God's "work" (2:2), and God's intention for Adam and Eve was to "work" the Garden of Eden (2:15). Unlike many ancient cultures then, work was not seen as a curse or a necessary drudgery. Instead, the Bible presents it as part of what it means to bear the image of God. As the story continues, we see work does not escape the effects of the curse against human rebellion. Therefore, work as we now experience it is often difficult and frustrating (3:17-19). But keep in mind that, though work, like everything else, suffers under this curse, work itself was not the curse.
And therefore work, like everything else, is part of what Jesus redeems from the curse.
Through his crucifixion and resurrection, Christ is making everything new--including how we experience work. That's why Paul can assure even those in the obscurity of menial service, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving" (Colossians 3:23-24, NIV84).
Of course, knowing it is the Lord Christ we serve in our daily work has a number of implications on how we conduct our business practices. For now, though, there's enough dynamite to shake up your world if you just start with this: Paul insisted that even the dullest job is part of the obedience we owe Jesus. "The very first demand that his religion makes upon the Christian carpenter," wrote the late evangelical scholar, Carl FH Henry, "is that he makes good cabinets and shelves."* Martin Luther gave a similar answer when asked how a common Christian shoemaker could be expected to glorify God. "Make excellent shoes for an excellent price," he replied.**
Maybe it's time to issue a call to raise up the "411generation"--as in 1 Thessalonians 4:11. Thank God for those who abandon everything to, say, open an African orphanage. But let's honor those who show an equal passion to lead "a quiet life," as Paul puts it, in the worthy pursuit of simple self-sustaining work.
I don't guess I'll ever hear a conference speaker firing up sixty-thousand college students to go out and be the best plumbers or software engineers they can possibly be, all for the glory of God.
But I can dream.
* Carl FH Henry, Aspects of Christian Social Ethics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 10.
** Quoted in Center Church by Tim Keller, pages 235-236.
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment