Reflection: Work

June 4th, 2012 by Robert

Genesis 2:15 “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

During my first several jobs unloading trucks, flipping fries, and tagging laundromat clothes, I often heard and repeated the phrase with my co-workers, “I’m working for the weekend.” It’s easy to think of work as something cursed, something mundane, or something ultimately meaningless. Many people look at their work as a necessary evil, as a means to merely pay the bills.

God clearly places very high importance on our work. Work was really Adam’s first calling. Adam’s work was nothing glorious. It was “keeping” a garden. My grandfather was a lifelong farmer, and I saw firsthand as a child the effort needed to keep a garden and reap its benefits. Tending a garden involves a lot of mundane, monotonous, tedious work, yet that is the exact work God gave Adam. The gospel teaches us of the God-ordained nature of work. Our Savior viewed His work in ministry, in life, in death, and in resurrection as His God-ordained calling (John 4:34; 17:4).

I think we all need to continue learning to view our work as something God has called each of us to, regardless of how meaningless it may seem in the grand scheme of things. If our work is a calling from God, then it can’t possibly be meaningless. If nothing else, our work, even the most mundane and tedious aspects of our work, has deep meaning in the reality that God has called us to it. Do we need more meaning that that? Any meaning we find in our work has to start with the reality that God has given us and called us to work.

Let’s ask God for wisdom to view our work, even the mundane and monotonous, as His gift and calling for each of us. Let’s ask Him for grace to repent of our laziness and for strength to work hard “as for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23).