Work makes the world go round
'Monday', Thomas Brazell said, 'is a bad way to spend a seventh of your life'. He has a point. Research indicates that Mondays are more manic or at least more dangerous to your health than any other day of the week. It's the day when you are most likely to have a heart attack or a stroke.
But work - for all its stresses - is what we're created for. It is what God did in the beginning and does now. God created. God worked. And at the end of his working day he says, 'It was good'. He doesn't dismiss this cosmic construction project as merely material or secular. It has significance for him. And he takes pleasure from the results. Along the way. Day by day. Even before the end-of-project appraisal. So the pleasure many of us get from a job well done, or sometimes just done, is 'spiritually' legitimate and can be played back to God in praise and gratitude.
Genesis chapter 1 also reveals that all creation was being prepared for the arrival of humankind; that God is getting everything ready for people to assume their roles as carers and stewards of creation, and to enjoy it with him. Our work should have the same intention - serving to create the conditions for human flourishing and responsibility and joy. God worked not just for his own pleasure but for the good of humankind. So too the role of work, of business, is not simply the generation of profit, but the stewardship of resources - human and material - for the benefit of all people, to the glory of God.
This is our calling.
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