Work As Worship

My friend Nathan (Nathanael) wrote an article a year or two ago with this same title, and I've been thinking about the idea recently. I'll borrow the title, but go in a slightly different direction than my dear friend, mainly because I'm a different person. :)

The very first thing we read about in the Bible is the story of God working. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." For the first six days He worked--pretty hard, if He created the entire universe. Then on the seventh day God rested from His work, after He had seen that it was "very good."

In the Garden, humans had work to do. We were to be fruitful and subdue the earth, and God put Adam in the garden "to work it and take care of it" (Gen. 2:15). So work is not simply a product of the fall--it was there in the beginning, as God worked to create, and it was there for us, as those made in God's image.

Work becomes tainted by the fall not in its existence, but in its difficulty, travail and sometimes futility. "By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread" doesn't mean that working the land is a punishment from God--He gave us this very work in the Garden. But work after the fall involves uncertainty, struggle and a sense of meaningless.

So if this is true, then it fits well with what Paul says in Colossians 3:23-24: "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." Work, then, is redeemed in Christ to be a form of worship. This is true whatever the nature of your work (although of course you can't be actively sinning by engaging in your work--you can't worship God as you work in prostitution or drug dealing or money laundering). We should look at our work, then, not only as an opportunity given by God to work to care for our needs and others, but as a direct form of worship. (This applies, by the way, regardless of whether our work is "secular" or in ministry--the scripture says "whatever you do." There is no truly secular work for the Christian.) By working sincerely and diligently in our vocations, we are offering up our time and our energies to the Lord, who gave Himself for us. He worked to create us and to redeem us, so we in turn give Him thanks by offering the fruit of our hands and minds to Him.

What a beautiful and glorious truth this is! What if we worked every day with this in mind? Would the work we do have more meaning, more joy and satisfaction? To know that by writing a program to calculate the cost of shipping soap internationally, or counting the bars of (very yummy-smelling) spearmint we have in stock, I am offering up worship to the living God! And the same thing goes for those of us working in construction, at McDonald's, at a bank or hospital or school or farm or church or insurance firm.

Let us rejoice in the opportunity we have to spend six days a week serving the Lord by working (whether at our jobs or at home, etc.), and let us rest in remembrance of God's finished work on the cross. Let us work to worship God, and to honor Him by serving in a way that blesses others. And let us not make work an idol by failing to rest as God rested, so that we acknowledge Him as the source of our providence and of our redemption, and give glory to Him through our work and our rest. "And whatever you do," whether work or rest, "do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col. 3:17).

Guilty Campaign

I wanted to bring to your attention the work of a couple friends of mine, the Guilty Campaign (or, I Am What's Wrong With the World). Things are still being developed, but the central philosophy is that the problems of the world are all simply an outpouring of the problem of the human heart--that education, health and wealth, while good in themselves, won't turn sinners into saints. Only Jesus can change people's hearts, so the ultimate solution to the problems of the world is the gospel. Pray for this message to go out to the campus here in Boulder, and to everyone whose heart is the source of the greed, violence, pride, hatred and injustice in this world. (That is, everybody.)

Pensamientos y oraciones

Buenas,

No sé por qué exactamente, pero estoy en un humor de pensar en español, y decidí que quería escribir aquí. Aún no sé quien leería esto que entiende el español; la mayoría de mis amigos hispanohablantes no leen este blog porque está escrito en inglés (y árabe o hebreo de vez en cuando). :)

Creo que mi humor tiene que ver con el hecho de que conocí al Señor en Argentina, y por eso el español para mí tiene un lugar muy importante espiritualmente en mi vida. Es como tener más español en mi cerebro sinifica que estoy más cerca de Dios o algo. Me acuerdo que las primeras semanas después de que Dios me salvó, aún no sabía bien como orar o adorar al Señor en inglés--fue casi como si el inglés fuera el idioma de mi "pasado pecadoso," y el español de la vida nueva que tenía en Cristo. (Es posible que esa es una razón porque siempre me interesan más las chicas latinas--las buenas asociaciones espirituales que tengo con el español, la cultura latina y todo.) Claro que Dios habla inglés tanto como habla español, pero en mi mente sigue habiendo un lugar más alto espiritualmente para el español. También creo que el hecho de que la mayoría de mis amigos acá no hablan el español quiere decir que es más especial, más misterioso o algo--no es el idioma de mi vida cotidiana, y por eso tiene más importancia y poder espiritualmente. Cuando digo "Te amo, Señor," quiere decir algo diferente que "I love you, Lord." Los dos son importantes--quiero que Cristo sea el rey de mi vida cotidiana tanto como mi vida esotérica y transcendente. Pero sin embargo no son los mismos en mi corazón. (A veces quiero comunicar con Dios en árabe o hebreo u otro idioma también, pero la verdad es que el español es el único idioma extranjero en que realmente me siento cómodo expresarme--no siempre digo las cosas perfectamente, pero siempre puedo expresarme.)

Señor, quiero decirte que te amo. Me alegro tanto de que me hayas dado el dón de poder decirte en varios idiomas que te quiero, que te agradezco por lo que hiciste en mi vida, lo que seguís haciendo. Me has derramado tu gracia y tu amor, y nunca quiero dejar de agradecerte por esta misericordia. Quiero estar contento en ti, satisfecho por el pan que me das, físicamente y espiritualmente. Sólo tú tienes palabras de vida eterna--ayúdame a buscar mi vida y mi gozo en ti, y no en ningún otro lugar. Lo siento que trato de correr de ti tantas veces. Ayúdame a ser fiel a ti, mi Dios fiel. Te amo--me has comprado por tu sangre, y soy tuyo para siempre.