Work as God's Gift to Us
Jan
29
Written by:
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Human creativity, ingenuity and productivity are all gifts to us by God. They are, no doubt, some of the sweet fruitfulness we enjoy from being made in God’s image as each of those traits originate in our Creator God.
We see God manifest those traits in the creation story and He, in fact, assigned the work of the garden to Adam in Genesis chapter 2, before the fall. Genesis 2:15 reads, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” In fact, God spoke His original intention for people earlier in 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” And again in 1:28, we read, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’” The fact that God intended us to work with Him in the care of His beautiful new creation from the very beginning, prior to sin entering the world or human experience is key for us as we contemplate our own work. John Stott puts it this way, “Work is a consequence of the creation not the fall and is intended by God as a means to a partnership with him, the service of others and self-fulfillment.” (1)
Our God is busy about His work with people and His creation even today and He created us to be His partners for the good of the earth, the people who live upon it now and those who will live here in the future and; ultimately, for our own fulfillment as people.
There are at least two challenges we can take from pondering this concept. One challenge is to ask God to show us what His work is in and around our own work areas. What is God busy doing with you and the people you work with and how can we be His co-laborers? The second, challenge requires reminding ourselves that our life’s work reaches beyond what we might receive a wage for. Our life’s work is more than just the job we might currently be employed in. In fact, our life’s work involves all the jobs we have ever done and what we hope to work at in the future; but also, such things as our avocations like art, or music; and crafts, or writings. Our life’s work can be creatively expressed and further developed aside from anything someone might pay us to do. Our second challenge then, is to recognize God’s creative work in and through us in all of our purposeful endeavors.
Let us see ourselves as God’s co-laborers in all that we do. Let us, as we so often say and read in Renovare’ materials, bring our own kingdoms under the rule and reign of God’s Kingdom as partners with God in His creative work of eternal consequence.
(1) John Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today (Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982), 312.
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