Thursday, June 12, 2014

Dirty hands that make God smile

(photo credit: churchintoronto.blogspot.com)

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people." (Colossians 3:22-23, New Living Translation)

I don't think anyone reading this today is an actual "slave", property owned by a master. But, you may feel enslaved by your job. Or you may feel enslaved by your lack of a job. Or you may feel enslaved by your fixed income.

Maybe you have all the financial and material resources you could ever need, you are the boss, you only work for yourself, and yet you still feel enslaved by the systems necessary to keep all those resources in place.

Everybody answers to somebody.

So, how can we experience freedom from this sense of enslavement? I'll give you a hint: it's not by being in charge. It's by offering our work as worship, looking beyond the task of the moment, to bring glory to God in every endeavor, and to do so with joyful abandon.

That paragraph was easy to write. It's pretty easy to read. It is a lot harder to live out. It is ... Work ... Real work.

And isn't that the point?

Question: How can we offer our work as worship? What habits have you found to be helpful to keep that perspective?

Leave a comment below.  Your thoughts might be helpful to someone else.

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