The joy of hard work
There is a reason hard work feels so good.
I power-washed my veranda. It took hours because I live downtown and 7 years of pollution had soaked into the stone floor to such an extent that ordinary hosing down had never truly cleaned it. I literally went over each section of the floor repeatedly as if I was painting with water.
When I was done though I felt good, really good. As I sat there on the veranda looking at the clean stone floor and everything in its place, I felt I had accomplished something of value, real value. And, I had.
What I felt is not unique to me. Perhaps you have experienced it as well. I remember first experiencing this feeling when I was in high school, and my parents bought me my first car.
It was a beautiful little sports car, a yellow and black Fiat X-19, but it was an older car. It had not been taken very good care of and needed restoration. In fact, my father would not let me drive the car until I had restored it. It took weeks of washing and detailing after school and on the weekends, but when it was done it looked great, and I felt great. Hard work feels good.
What I experienced with my first car and on my veranda is common to man. Who works a long hard day and says, “I wish I hadn’t done that”? When we work hard we feel satisfied. We feel fulfilled.
What we feel is common to man because all people are created in the image of God, and God is a worker.
The image of God: a worker
In the first scene in which God reveals Himself to man–the creation account in Genesis 1–God is working. See Genesis 1:1-31. Jesus said, “I am working, and my Father is working until now.” John 5:17. Jesus said to the Father in prayer at the end of His ministry, “I have glorified You because I have completed the work you gave me.” John 17:4.
Inherent then in every man, woman, and child is the image of a worker, the Lord God. When we work hard our spirit resonates on the same frequency as that image and we fill satisfied, at home in our bodies. Hard work is a tuning fork for our souls.
“Hard work is a tuning fork for our souls.”
Labor brings joy because we were created to work. Even before the fall of man, God told Adam to go into the world, subdue it and take dominion over it. It was a call to imitate God, whose Spirit had hovered over the chaos of formless matter, the primordial paint on a canvas, to impose order on it. See Genesis 1:2. The fulfillment of that mandate could only be accomplished through hard work.
We were made to work, and we were made to impose order on the world through our work, whether it be restoring a car or cleaning a veranda. GS
