Reflections: Work is a blessing when …

Since Labour Day is this weekend, yours truly, a newly retired pastor (since last October), is going to try to write a column on work. Not that I feel any more or less qualified now than when I was a productive member in the workforce.

Truth be told it actually feels like I am still working.

At least partially because on behalf of the Elora-Fergus Ministerial I am still regularly leading chapel services at seniors’ homes, I am guest preaching fairly often at churches, I do some volunteer work driving folks without wheels to appointments and stuff, and I still do pastoral visits to some shut-ins who were in my church.

But it’s more than the volunteer work that makes it feel like I am still working. I think it is about the meaning and direction of my living. 

How do we understand work? On more than a few occasions over the years when I was pastoring and I would invite a retired pastor to come and preach a sermon at our church on a Sunday when I was off, the response was, “No thanks, when I retired I quit preaching”. 

To me this would have made sense if it was necessitated by some kind of inability. But in most circumstances that was not the case. Rather it seemed to me preaching had been “work” to them and they were all to glad to retire from such work.

Another example is the not infrequent story of the aging farmer who has finally had to admit he can’t do it anymore and proceeds to sell the farm and move to town to the “joy” of idle retirement from the work he loved. And within months he’s dead from the sudden onset of heart attack or cancer. 

I want to suggest that work indeed includes what we have to do to earn a living. But if that is all work is to you, chances are your work is not very fulfilling or meaningful for you.

Be assured that this pastor has not always done only the “divine work” of being a minister. I grew up doing physical work on the farm. I have worked on road repair and line painting crews, as a dump truck driver and asphalt paver, at a grain elevator shovelling rotten soyabeans out of elevator pits in the heat of summer, and as a hanger in a chicken slaughter house getting covered in chicken poop eight hours a day.

In all these jobs, especially the yucky ones, I was blessed to have been taught the secret of a healthy work ethic – it’s primarily not the nature of the work you do that determines how much you enjoy the work, it’s what you are living for, the meaning and direction of your living.

As I have frequently written in these pages what makes life truly worth living for us human beings is the meaning and purpose we choose for our living. And our meaning and purpose is the product of the beliefs and values and hopes we have about why we are here, what our Creator God wants us to be and do, and the future we are destined for.

Materialism – the modern world view that denies God and holds that the material world we experience through our senses is all there is, and we are born, we live, we die, and then we are no more – promises us no greater, enduring purpose or future for our living, just “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Hence our modern culture’s pursuing hedonistic pleasure, entertainment, amusement and drug-fuelled escapism. Materialism provides little reason to work more than what’s needed to provide the money to have a good time, so can’t help make work fulfilling or meaningful for you.

Another way of describing this is to ponder what bigger story or narrative is your life a part of. Materialism says there is no bigger story – you just be you and do your own thing. 

Here is where faith, especially Christian faith, makes a huge difference in life. To be a Christian is to understand that my life is not my own to do with as I wish – it is a gift from God to be used to serve the greater, eternal story/purposes of God.

The New Testament says Christians/the Church are the body of Christ, meaning we are living to be the presence of Jesus to the world around us, sharing His love, grace, peace, hope, and faith with the people around us. We are inviting people to understand that God wants them to be His children, to experience his love and forgiveness and new life, and to ultimately be with Him in eternity.

This is the foundational “work” Christians are called to, the meaning, purpose and direction of our living. No matter your vocation or profession or business or job, this is the work that is the focus of our living. Anything we do to earn a living or volunteer our time or just get up in the morning to do is an expression of and is blessed by this sacred “work.”

No matter the earning-a-living work you do or are retired from or can no longer do because of disability, your life will be meaningful and fulfilling if you have surrendered it, whatever your level of ability or disability, to be used by the loving God who gave you life and invites you to live for His eternal life and purposes.