Most of us work because we need a paycheck. Others more driven (for the most part) have work that pays and they enjoy. Of course there are those that luck into something that they enjoy and pays. There are people who's job defines them; they would be lost souls without that work structure. There are some who put work before friends, family and any kind of personal life. I'm sad for those. They don't take to heart the adage, "No one was their death bed wishing they had spent more time at the office."
The question is, do you identify with your work? Are you expressing God's will, being fruitful with the talents you've been gifted with? Dorothy Sayers: "It is only when work has to be looked on as a means to gain that it becomes hateful; for then, instead of a friend, it becomes an enemy from whom tolls and contributions have to be extracted." Many of us I think are experiencing this, maybe not to the level of hateful, but we do feel our jobs to be an enemy that extracts from us.
Sayer's again: "Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.”
I have to wonder about this. I have a passion for writing, someone else maybe for painting, someone else fixing cars. Few, I think, are doing for income something they live to do. Most are in positions of doing something to live. I would love to sit home, research and write for a living. Were we all to do those things that were an expression of our faculties, we would probably be in a financially impoverished society. The result of that would be all but the very few just struggling to survive. I remember a man calling in to Dr. Laura, that had quit his job as a banker. He hated the job, so took a lesser paying one that he liked. It was causing hardship on his family, and was creating an emotional rift within his marriage. Dr. Laura advised him we don't necessarily have to like our work, but that work is there to provide other things. Providing for his family should be his priority, not doing what he liked.
It's a good thing, within reason, we are forced into working at things we don't so much like. I've been soldier, sailor, lifeguard, librarian, delivery driver, customer service rep, roughneck, to name a few. Most of those were to stay alive (lifeguard and librarian were waaay fun though). I have to define work as something else than a job.
My relationship with God defines my work. I have a moral obligation to provide the best quality I can to whatever company I work for. It, like religion, is all about service. Work, as CS Lewis points out, is to provide leisure time. "We wage war in order to have peace; we work in order to have leisure." There hasn't always been leisure time for most people for most of civilization. Jews and Christians provided us with Sabbath days, leisure days to rest and worship, giving us those much focused on days off. No leisure days before that. As we become a more secular society, the rest and relaxation part takes precedent, at our peril as a society. My secular friends will of course disagree, but I'll put aside my winning argument until later.
Actually, my work is God's work all the time. Since God informs my behavior and thoughts, I'm working, in a sense all the time. I get physical breaks. As a Christian, and people know that I am, my actions are always a testament; people don't want to hear Christian talk about God; big turn off. So in a way, Sayers is right. Work is something I live to do, if I understand I'm serving all through God's will. I witness God's goodness though my job, through work, through whatever I volunteer for. Whatever I do in that light, brings me "spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he [I] offers himself [myself] to God.”
My job, as stressful and frustrating as it is sometimes, does provide me the leisure to rest and worship.
The Bible has a lot of observations about work.
"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates."
"Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed."
"He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them master craftsmen and designers."
"He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment."
"All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."
"The sluggard's craving will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work."
"Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income."
"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men."
If I keep always in my heart and mind, my work is my testament of my love of God, then my work is my fulfillment of God's gifts given me.
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