The Bible begins with God at work, creating, designing and naming. He saw everything that he had made. "It was very good. He rested on the seventh day." (Genesis 1: 31; 2:2). When man was created God placed him in a garden "to till it and keep it." Then we see the cost of man's disobedience. The ground is cursed, thorns and thistles will grow alongside the crops. Work becomes hardship. "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread." (Genesis 3: 18,19). Work is a divine command, before and after the fall. Sloth, idleness and laziness are condemned in scripture. The book of Proverbs, for example, has these warnings: "The lazy person does not plow in season, harvest comes and there is nothing to be found." (Proverbs 20:4). "The craving of the lazy person is fatal, for lazy hands refuse to labour." (Proverbs 21:25).
Jesus takes many of his illustrations from work; the work of a housekeeper, sower, shepherd, merchant, builder. In his letters Paul often reminded his friends of the importance of diligent work. He told the elders of Ephesus, "I worked with my own hands to support myself and my companions." (Acts 20:34). He appealed to the Thessalonians to "respect those who labour among you, esteem them very highly in love because of their work." (1 Thessalonians 5: 12, 13). He exhorted his young friend Timothy to "do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15). There are many issues associated with work. There are union demands, strikes, unfair conditions, gender and racial and class discrimination, forced labour and the disturbing reality of unemployment. We also know people who hold on to jobs they don't like and people who have been wrongfully dismissed, or hired for positions though unqualified.
There is a tendency for us to demean or exalt people, depending on the job they have. Work is a way we co-operate, that is, work together, with God, for the good of the earth. It is a blessed privilege and responsibility. Work and rest, work and justice, work and worship: these terms cannot be separated. Even the very word "liturgy" means the "work of the people." God uses every skill and qualification, every experiment and device for the improvement of life on our earthly dwelling-place. The surgeon and street-cleaner, the priest and the postman, the banker and the bricklayer are all God's servants, required to be faithful to duty, honest in their motives. We become discouraged at times. Paul speaks of death as being an enemy to be conquered, for to think of the absolute certainty of death can make us think life is ultimately meaningless. But he urges us, all of us workers in all fields, to be "steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord, your labour is not in vain." (1 Corinthians 15:58).
