Work

November 10, 2018

It’s not uncommon when men retire for them to die within months. If as is often the case, their work has been their reason for living, their entire purpose for drawing breath, when it is gone it somehow snuffs out the spark of life in their souls. In the earliest pages of the Holy Scriptures, God gave Adam work to do, tending the Garden of Eden. After delivering the Hebrews from the unending toil of slavery in Egypt, God mercifully gave them the Ten Commandments, of which the fourth is, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” I’m sure that after ceaseless slave labor, this was a particularly welcome commandment. Strange how easily we have abandoned it as we chase never ending activity in a fruitless quest for satisfaction. 

But as commonly as that commandment is violated today, so is its companion, “Six days shall thou work.” While many never slow down, others never even get going. If one never really works, how can they know the pleasure of genuine rest?

Today was busy. Grandkids overnight needed to be fed in the morning. A funeral occupied the rest of the morning, while a trip to town to pick up 200 lbs of sunflower seeds for the birds followed by lunch with Linda took us into mid afternoon. I plowed the driveway and put winter tires on our granddaughter’s car before locking her keys in the ignition. We gave her the car a couple years ago, and in the interim I forgot that it had a nasty habit of occasionally locking the doors automatically after exiting the driver’s seat. Forty five minutes of wedging the door and maneuvering a homemade slimjim finally got it opened, to my relief. Delivering the car to its owner was a pleasure enhanced by the lock episode. 

All this doesn’t sound like much, but it occupied my entire day, and as I watch the fire in our stove at the end of it, I am grateful for work. Today’s was pretty ordinary stuff, but it needed to be done, and I was given the gift of doing it. It was one of those Six Days; now I’m looking forward to the Sabbath, even though it too, brings a measure of work for me. It gives a rhythm to life that I need as much as a song needs rhythm, and directs me to the real Purpose of life—as best as I can, to give God glory in all I do.