In the last blog post I looked at the nature of God relative to work.
I noted that from the beginning God has been working and that Jesus worked very hard. Work is part of the lifestyle of the Lord.
Man is made in the image of God. (Gen. 1:26) And after God made man in His image He placed him in the Garden of Eden.
The Garden of Eden is rightly characterized as paradise on earth. It was before the Fall of Man. Sin had not corrupted man or the rest of creation, and yet present in this paradise was something we rarely associate with paradise: work.
And it wasn’t just that there was work in the garden; God put man in the garden with a work-related purpose: to keep and cultivate the garden. (Gen. 2:15). Work, then, cannot be a necessary evil. It was part of paradise.
Like God, it is in our nature to work and to produce, which is why we feel good when we do so. Whether it’s closing a big deal at work, volunteering at the local charity or mowing our yards, work feels good. We think we have to work to earn a living; in reality, we have to work to truly live.
What people dislike about work actually has nothing to do with work in and of itself; it has everything to do with those things that interfere with it. It’s the reason so many people don’t like their jobs. I’ll explain in the next post. GS.