We often hear that our work somehow has dignity. In Christian circles, we even are told that there is a mandate way back in Genesis 1:28 which cryptically implies that our work is good and given to us before sin even entered the world.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
It turns out that chapter 2 of Genesis has three much more explicit and easy-to-remember points that drive home both the goodness and beauty of the gift of work.
Work Reveals God’s Nature
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. Genesis 2:1-2
This first point is that God is a worker and that his nature is embedded in and displayed through both the nature and results of work. God is the prototype Worker during the creation week. We see incredible planning, architecture, science & engineering, biology, resource management, design and artistry, linguistics, and social structures, all emerging from an empty void. This helps us understand what God is like and that everything in creation finds its meaning and reference in the person and nature of God.
“When we do our jobs, we are constantly revealing the nature of things, how they are meant to work, and some truth about God himself.”
Andrew Wilson, in his wonderful book God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in the Everyday World, draws this out. Along with the apostle Paul in Romans 1, who states that “creation reveals God’s invisible power and diving nature,” Wilson elaborates:
The God of the Sahara must be vast, boundless, and expansive, The God of quarks must have an unimaginable eye for detail. The God of wombats must have a sense of humor. Everything in creation has theological implications, and one of the joys of being human is figuring out what they are… (C)reation points beyond itself. Things exist not for their own sakes but to draw us back to God… The things of God reveal the God of things.
Wilson goes on to point to more than just the natural world and shows how even the things humankind has made of the world such as tools and cities reveal God and his ways. When we do our jobs, we are constantly revealing the nature of things, how they are meant to work, and some truth about God himself. Our work, as it interacts with the created stuff of the world, says something about God if we stop and listen to creation speaking back to us.
A World Created for Work
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground… Genesis 2:5
Second, God created an undeveloped world in need of and dependent on humanity to shape, fulfill, and sustain it for both God’s glory and the good of others. The world is designed for our work and the development of creation. There is a theology of making and cultivating built into the very fabric of creation. We are called to make something of the world.
“There is a theology of making and cultivating built into the very fabric of creation. We are called to make something of the world.”
A Partner for Our Work
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Genesis 2:15
The last point is that God gave us a relational pattern for our work in the design and shaping of a garden as a place of communion with God. The words for “work” and “keep” are the same terms used of priests’ roles in temple service and protection. In fact, the “work” given by God in this creation narrative is the Hebrew word “avodah” which is also used for temple service and worship. There is built into the purpose of our work the acknowledgment and invitation to partner with and commune with our Creator God—what a glorious privilege we have!
God wants to be revealed in the nature of your work, he has prepared the world for you to work in it, and he is ever-present to partner with you as you engage your work as an act of worship. Remember these good gifts from God in your work this Labor Day week.
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 served as an aerospace executive at The Boeing Company for 36 years.