Has your work ever felt pointless?
I remember in some of my early days in the workforce I found myself discouraged by the thankless nature of the work I was called to.
I worked in an office, and while the tasks I was assigned from my communications director helped provide me with a means of productivity, I struggled to see how they were making any difference in the lives of anyone.
I struggled seeing the vocational influence I had to steward. From my vantage, my work was just a means of checking a box so I could receive my scheduled payments and move on with my days.
But what if my perception of work was just a bit short-sided? What if there was value not simply in the product of the sweat of my brow but also in the work itself?
The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians begins offering us a list of directives towards the end of chapter three. Paul’s words help those caught in the midst of slave labor. He calls those working under oppression to “work heartily, as for the Lord.”
While in no way did my work fall under the oppressive leadership that Paul is referencing such as physical persecution, I do sometimes share the struggle of feeling malcontent and hopeless about the work I do.
It is often hard to see the point while focused on using the work to advance our own agenda. Paul graciously and lovingly offers a word of hope for those working when the sense of meaning and worth feels distant. “Work heartily,” he says. While this might at first blush sound like a call to just “suck it up and do it anyway,” dignity and affirmation for a hard-day’s labor come through in what follows.
He continues, “knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.”
How might our attitudes change towards our vocations if we saw them not as a means of self-fulfillment but of God-glorification?
Instead of falling into the plight that Dorothy Sayers highlights of using our work to serve ourselves, what if we sought to serve the work the Lord has graciously invited us into?
God has called all of humanity into his great project for creation as his image-bearers, to mirror his nature out into the earth (Gen. 1:26-28). Any honest service, no matter which field of employment we find ourselves or how small or mundane the task may seem, that provides a better ordered and cultivated world, honors God’s good intent for this world and is cause for gratitude and a pronouncement at the end of the day to say as God did during his creation week, “it is good.”
God is at work to “make his blessing flow/ far as the curse is found,” as the famed Isaac Watts hymn goes. We have been graciously invited to “serve the Lord Christ” through the daily work of our hands.
Take heart that through the finished work of Christ, whatever your work may be, it exists as an opportunity to serve God, serve your neighbor, and serve the work itself.
This article was originally published in conjunction with with Fuller Seminary’s De Pree Center. You can read the original piece on their website.
Gage Arnold is the Communications Director for the Center for Faith & Work Los Angeles. He is currently an M.Div student at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO., and holds a B.S. in Journalism & Electronic Media from the University of Tennessee.