Work is a four letter word….

Good.  The word you are looking for is “good”.  Sheesh.

Tom Becker (Wifey) (Veritas) was our preacher today.  And his text was from Ecclesiastes. 

Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said in my heart,”What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind…For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die…What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.  I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.

Tom’s challenge to us was this.  Work.  Work.  That’s it.  Is there anything else really more profound?  Oh!  And to delight in; take pleaseure in; bask in the pleasure of sweat and mud and earth and

dirty laundry and

broken ear canals and

downed PC networks and

crying children and….what’s your work to which God has called you?  I still struggle to delight in driving an 18-wheeler while my heart is driven toward pastoral academics.  But I have begun to pray intentionally rather than passively.  Rather than ask God to change my heart (merely) I am praying in the indicative: I delight in serving you here.

But I do think work is a four letter word.  It’s H-A-R-D.  It takes work to work.  I live in the sticks where the Amish work (did I say work, I meant live; oh!  They’re the same?).  I hated work as a kid (adult).  But really, work is nothing more than living.  Sure there’s a time for PS4 or Halo or crocheting or running (John, Jay, et al), but to work hard and long and good. 

So, do you delight in your work? How did God challenge you from his word today?