WORK is a Good Thing

Well, there you are. One more time. Dig both here with both in front. Stories to make a difference. It's a Labor Day week, 2022, and I'm asking myself, why do we celebrate Labor Day? I mean, we apparently were celebrating work, but we're supposed to take a holiday, not work. Well, Labor Day's roots are found in 1894 when it was made a national holiday. In the years prior, there had been some riots in this country over working conditions. If you worked in a factory in particular, you had very poor working conditions. Long hours, you were working 12-hour days, six days a week, poor ventilation, whether you were an adult or a child. All of it was in play. In 1894, they decided to the government decided to have a holiday to honor workers. And they called it Labor Day, and it would be the first Monday of each September. So here we are. So what does work? Well, work easily means, simply means getting something done, a project, a task, a vision. We use work, that word, all the time. With other phrases, we say, gotta go to work. I'll work it out. That guy is a piece of work, or I'm a work in progress. If I have to choose between being a piece of work, which is sort of derogatory, or a work in progress, I'll go with a work in progress. Let me ask you this question. What was the first job? And there's work as several definitions that could be vocation, it could be career, could be calling, could be just a job. What was the first job that you had when you were younger? I think, for me, my first job was as a paper boy in East Oakland, California. I delivered the East Bay shopping news to 128 homes in the hills of East Oakland on Tuesdays and on Saturdays. And the owners of the company, or the people who produced it, would come and drop off bundles for the various paper boys at certain corners. And so I'd walk about a quarter of a mile from my house, maybe half mile. And I had these bags that you put over your head, these big canvas bags, and you put the unfolded papers in the front and the back. And then you would walk the route, and you would fold the papers as you went. And get them into sort of a missile, if you will, of print and paper. And you'd aim for the porch and hope you hit it. And you tried to stay out of the rows, bushes. I can't remember how much I got paid for that. But for a couple of years, I think, it was Tuesdays and Saturdays, sometimes very early on Saturday morning. And I would just go and do that. And there was a sense of achievement in that. You say, why? Well, because I achieved something, because there was work, I got some dollars for it. And that was wonderful. To say somebody is a good worker is usually a high compliment. Somebody will say that person is an excellent workman. I don't know in my world anybody who works more systematically, more diligently, longer hours with greater result than my wife Ruth. Ruth and I just celebrated 59 years together. And she's been a model for me in a lot of ways. Her diligence, her persistence, whether it's in gardening or crocheting or quilting, certainly in the bringing up of the children. Or in the last decade or so in or more than that, I guess 20 years in letter writing years ago when I was president of small college, sometimes people would say, so how do you employ people? How do you hire them? What are you looking for? And what I would say to them is, I look for people who initiate, who have ideas, who get started. And I look for people who follow through, they need competence, of course, but they follow through, they close it out, they take it to the end. And that process of working that takes some project, some task from beginning to end is significant, not significant. It's productive in what makes the world around a lot of ways. What I find interesting, too, is that back in Genesis, way back in what we would call the Old Testament Scriptures, there's this wonderful couple of lines in Genesis 4 chapter that talks about three brothers. One is Jabal, who was a specialist, he lived in tents and raised livestock. We here in Colorado would call it a rancher. Then there's Jubal, who was a specialist in stringed instruments and pipes, he was musician. And then Tubal, who forged tools of bronze and iron. So you have this interesting combination of ranching on the one end, and you have industry on the other end, and in the middle, you have music. What do they have in common? It's all work. That's what they have in common. So there's this wonderful passage that these thoughts that Paul, the apostle, writes to a church in Turkey. He talks about work, and this is how he talks about it. He says, for it is by grace you have been saved, redeemed, through faith, through trust. And this not from yourselves, it's the gift of God, not by works, that is, that's something I can't work to get. If I'm going to be whole, if I'm going to be redeemed by God, I can't work for that. So that no one can boast for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. So he says, I can't make myself whole by works, but I can by trusting God, who come to realize that I am a work of God. I'm his craftsmanship. One translation says I'm his masterpiece. And my purpose is to do good works, to do things that bring life and refreshing and help to other people. And that God has prepared those in advance for us. I have to admit I don't fully understand what all of that means. I certainly don't understand how it all comes together. I just know that my life is centered in work and around work, whether it's the work of God in us or the work of God expressed through us. Work's a good word. I like that. So let's go get something done. It's time. God bless. Catch you later. Bye bye.