Wednesday, October 2 – Daily Devotion for First Program / MONEY WORK AND DEBT Day 10 LIVING AND WORKING TOGETHER Matthew 8:21-22 Work. It’s a loaded term if there ever was one. Saying that something is a lot of work can be an excuse to not do it. It can be a complaint or a way of emphasizing the difficulty of a task. When you ask a friend how her new job is going, she might shrug and say, “It’s work,” meaning it’s not all that great. Social interactions often end with the phrase I’d better get back to work, meaning that work is an obligation. When we talk about our work, we usually mean a job that we go to forty hours a week so we can get a paycheck and pay our bills. These days, even finding a job can be hard, and many people have had to take employment that is beneath their level of skill or training because it’s better than nothing. The economy and the goal of creating jobs are frequent political talking points. But when the results aren’t what was promised, we grow cynical. It’s easy to understand why the term work often has a negative connotation. But work isn’t just about punching a clock to get paid. The Bible shows us that work has a much deeper meaning and is as important to our spiritual lives as it is our economic lives. In Genesis, God created human beings, put them in the Garden of Eden, and told them to tend it. God did not tell Adam and Eve to consume all the resources as fast as they could to maximize profit. Nor did God tell them to sit around and wait for fruit to fall from the tree so they could eat. Tending the land meant working it to help produce good things and living in harmony with it to make it fertile and useful for generations to come. Adam and Eve were not entitled beneficiaries of God’s good creation. They were empowered to be an active part of the Lords ongoing creative activity. We human beings, God’s image bearers, were created to work – not the work of endless, meaningless toil (that part came after Adam and Eve ate the fruit and got booted out of the garden), but work that fulfills us and helps us realize the potential God created in each of us. Work was a tricky issue in the early church too. We read in Acts that the emerging Christian communities sold their possessions and lived together, making sure everyone had what they needed. Showing such grace carried the inherent risk that some people might take advantage of them, simply taking and not contributing to the best of their ability. So Paul and the apostles told the believers that if they did not contribute their fair share, they wouldn’t be able to participate in the benefits of the communal life: “If anyone doesn’t want to work, they shouldn’t eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Notice the phrase want to. There were undoubtedly some in these communities, just as there are today, who were limited in their ability to work, or just plain unstable. Someone who had lost both legs wouldn’t be left out because of inability to work the fields. People who were unable to work were taken care of, and they made contributions in other ways. The early church was able to act fairly because of the mutual love and trust that existed among its members, and because the network of relationships was strong enough that people knew one another’s abilities. They loved each other enough to hold each other accountable for doing their fair share of the work, whatever that fair share was. Our work is an essential part of being the people God created us to be. It is a crucial part of our lives of faith, because we fully experience the blessings of community when we give all that we can to its common life. Our lives are not full without work! God, thank you for work. Thank you for giving each of us different abilities and showing us how to work together to achieve your purposes. Help me work as hard as I can and gave my best effort so I can be an instrument of your blessing to others. Amen.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 21:27:39 +0000
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