The Ability To Look Beyond Us

Do your windows need washing--again?

Paul wrote to slaves in Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily as unto the Lord.”

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