Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters
Colossians 3:23
Before sin came to our world there was work. Did you ever realize that?
In Genesis 2:15 we read that God put man in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. I think God intended Adam to gather fruit and vegetables daily to provide for nutritional needs. Harvesting was work, but in a good way. Imagine loving to do work! Work brought Adam joy, food for life and a sense of accomplishment.
Then we see that when sin came along that same work became toilsome. In Genesis 3:17-19 God said that the ground then would produce thorns and thistles – competition in several ways for healthy plants. God also said that work then would cause us to sweat – to make us give a lot of effort. Those same fruits and vegetables now became more difficult to harvest because of the weeds choked them out.
Most people in our lifetime look at work as something that is hard and a duty they don’t look forward to doing. Commercials, TV shows and movies all give work a bad name. But we should realize that God created us for work, and by realizing that is part of our human design accept work as a way of glorifying God! Work is another way to worship God!
So if you work in retail you are serving a customer, but you are working to please God – that’s how He designed you. If you stack, ship, move or manage for a living – do your tasks to please God. If your job is to make widgets, then make them as if God paid you. If mowing, cleaning, chores and the like is your thing – do them all to be pleasing God!
Below is one of my favorite quotes that gives a great description of what somebody looks like that loves working and is bringing glory to God.
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.”
James A. Michener