I like to read. But I am a slow reader. This has left me with a growing stack of unread must-reads which sometimes feels like a metaphor for other areas of life. I have similar frustrations over playing the guitar, getting regular exercise, and other activities. Elements in our work lives can feel similar. We often wish much of our labor could be different, better, or more.
What gives me a sense of peace when I get frustrated over the “must-reads” of my life piling up is to remember what God says and requires of me. I need to constantly return to his desires for me and that what he says is what is truest about me in life. Then I need to hold these truths in constant balance and acceptance. Truths like:
God is always good. (Mark 10:18)
He gives us good work to do to reflect his nature in us. (Gen. 1:26-28)
Our work is sometimes challenging and does not work out. (Gen. 3:17-19)
God uses everything for good in ways we do not yet understand. (Rom. 8:28)
I recently slowed down and re-read Kara Martin’s Workship: How to Use Your Work to Worship God. She does a nice job doing what I just started to do above by collecting the best of wisdom, stories, insights, life lessons, and synthesizing them into simple helpful guides. These resources keep us moving forward in balance with all that God desires, especially in our work lives. Her insights provide a great and very realistic overview of how to have an integrated life of faith and work. A few of my favorite highlights from her book provide a great overlay to my points above.
“We should see something of his [God’s] goodness expressed in our work as we connect what we do to what he is like. ”
God is always good and is a worker. Martin highlights the many metaphors of human work God uses in the Bible to describe his work such as creator, sustainer, farmer, gardener, composer, performer, tentmaker, builder, architect, etc. Hence, work is intrinsically good. We should see something of his goodness expressed in our work as we connect what we do to what he is like.
He gives us good work to do to reflect his nature in us through “incarnational working.” We don’t just work for God. God works with and through us. Martin suggests a wonderful exercise to take our own job and view it as “incarnational” work where God is present working in and through us. Our jobs need to be seen as doing work that God does in the world because we work the way God does and with God.
Martin cites this beautiful example of how even the function of being a postal worker can be transformed as it is reframed (taken from an old post office inscription at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum):
Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common Life
Carrier of News and Knowledge
Instrument of Trade and Industry
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations
Our work is sometimes challenging and does not work out because of the effects of sin in the world. Realistic stories about work and life include their beauty, their limits, and sometimes their painful tragedies. Martin includes several of these honest stories which are very helpful. The scars of a fallen world often remain even on our best work. Acceptance of this creates a balanced perspective and helps us find peace in the toughest of seasons. Martin includes a wonderful quote from Pastor Bob Thune in his article Work Cursed and Redeemed in The Gospel Coalition:
It’s important that we see both the goodness of work in God’s original creation and the struggle of work under the Fall. If we only see the good, we’ll be frustrated when things don’t go as they should. If we only see the bad, we’ll have a hard time doing our work to the glory of God. Work is not all good, and it’s not all bad. It is part of God’s good creation, which has been tainted by the Fall. And God is at work to redeem work.
God uses everything for good in ways we do not yet understand and the good work done finds its way into God’s eternal Kingdom.
God’s Kingdom has broken into this world in Jesus’ work during his life, death, and resurrection. But his Kingdom continues to break into our world through all the ways our daily work brings glimpses and foretastes of that final day when Jesus returns. Our good work today, even the unfinished and broken offerings, is, as Martin says, “a foreshadowing of that renewal, helping to bring about the kingdom in more tangible ways.” Jesus will complete what we’ve begun in his full restoration, redemption, and mending of our broken world.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)
Note: Kara Martin is a featured speaker at our 2023 Annual Faith & Work Conference: Labor as Liturgy coming up on May 6, 2023. For more information and registration click HERE.
Steve is the Executive Director here at the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles and leads the vision and overall ministry. Prior to this position, Steve was as an aerospace executive at The Boeing Company after 36 years of service.