Collecting Seashells
Work doesn’t have the most pleasant connotation. It sounds hard. Arduous. It is the antonym of “play”, yet work was created BEFORE the Fall. God placed Adam in the garden to “work it and take care of it” while everything was still GOOD. It was a curse of the Fall that caused work to become an act of toil. Work now produces sweat, blisters and pulled muscles along with stress and work-a-holism. If God created us to work, if we are “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works which God prepared in advance for us to do”, what should work feel like? If good works are something we are commanded to do, not for reconciliation to God but because of it, then work should be approached not as a grind but as an act of worship…something to embrace rather than something to escape.
John Piper preached a famous sermon nearly 20 years ago that he intended as a message for teens and twenty-somethings…a message to inspire them as they set out toward adulthood. It launched a book called “Don’t Waste Your Life”, which ended up resonating more with those in their 50s and 60s. He spoke of two couples: one in their 80s, serving as missionaries in a foreign country who die in a plane crash. The other is in their 50s and have taken early retirement to Florida where they spend their days golfing and collecting seashells. Piper posed the question, “which is the bigger tragedy?”. His point was that the wasted life of collecting seashells was far more tragic than the plane crash that ended the lives of the two missionaries. The message was that God created us to work and is pleased with our work. We were not created for leisure, even in the perfect Garden of Eden.
Does your work feel like worship? Does your work feel like ministry? Maybe your 9 to 5 job doesn’t feel like either but you can still serve Him in those hours, turning your workplace into a mission field. And He may have given you other “works” to pursue outside of your employment. You may have talents, skills or passions that He intends for higher purpose.
He designed us for a purpose. He has work for us to do. Our task is to figure out what that is and then consider it a blessing! We learned this week that the Greek word for “workmanship” as translated in Ephesians 2:10, is “poemia”. Our word for “poem” stems from the same Greek word. A poem is an intentional design of words to deliver a message in an artful form. Poemia is the word for God’s creation of man…workmanship, masterpiece. There is purpose, intentionality, and creative methodology behind our lives.
Colossians 3:23-24 reads “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for man, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is Christ you are serving.”
So work! And work with all your heart! And never stop.
~ Melissa Gibbs has been a member of LIFE Fellowship for over 10 years, is the mother to four boys and widow of the late JD Gibbs. She also is a founding board member of Ambassador Christian School.