Do your windows need washing--again? |
A powerful word for when the work we're doing makes
us feel like slaves. Vacuuming carpets (again)?
Fixing the leaky sink (again)? If this work doesn't seem like “the work of God,”
there is something we can do about it: we can think differently about work.
This is the power of the Word of God applied to our everyday
lives: the ability to look beyond us. We don’t find meaning in our work, we bring meaning to our
work when we approach work as something God wants done, regardless
of how “mundane” it may seem at the time.
Martin Luther, in his “Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity” sermon, exhorted his listeners to never separate God’s Word from their work.
He advised his listeners to “inculcate” the Word of God into daily work, and
that “by such work more is accomplished than if one had established all the
cloisters and kept all the orders, although it be the most insignificant
domestic work.”
“Our foolishness,” Luther maintained, “consists in laying too
much stress upon the show of works and when these do not glitter as something
extraordinary we regard them as of no value; and poor fools that we are, we do
not see that God has attached and bound this precious treasure, namely his
Word, to such common works as filial obedience, external, domestic, or civil
affairs [and fish management], so as to include them in his order and command,
which he wishes us to accept, the same as though he himself had appeared from
heaven.”
“What
would you do if Christ himself with all the angels were visibly to descend, and
command you in your home to sweep your house and wash the pans and kettles? How
happy you would feel, and would not know how to act for joy, not for the work’s
sake, but that you knew that thereby you were serving him, who is greater than
heaven and earth.”
“If we would only consider this, and by the power of the Word
look beyond us, and think that it is not man, but God in heaven who wishes and
commands these things, we would run full speed, and in a most faithful and
diligent manner rather do these common, insignificant works, as they are
regarded, than any others.” [Emphasis added.]
Posted by Dr. Christian Overman
Posted by Dr. Christian Overman