Labor Day Weekend
Working For A Living or Living To Work?
Its Labor Day weekend.
One of our more interesting federal and state holidays.
It is the holiday for the Common Man.
The origin of Labor Day starts in the middle of the Industrial Revolution.
People moved from the farms to the factories to make money.
Immigrants were flooding into the Northeastern part of the country.
Workers were plentiful, even women and children worked in
the factories and the mills.
Labor conditions were poor,
long hours usually 12 hour shifts six days a week, low pay,
hazardous conditions, not enough housing,
no sick days, health or dental care, no retirement,
no social security, not unemployment benefits,
no welfare, no workmen’s comp.
and no job security.
By 1870 Labor Unions begin to form.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5632/the_origin_and_history_of_labor_day_pg2.html?cat=37
When the rail road workers went on strike in 1893
Democratic President Grover Cleveland declared that strike to be a federal
crime and sent 12,000 troops to force laborers back to work.
People were killed, people were arrested, the union was squashed.
“In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed unanimously
through both houses of Congress,
and the bill arrived on President Cleveland's desk just six days
after his troops had broken the strike,”
to appease the nations working class with a
national holiday.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/september96/labor_day_9-2.html
Being an election year Cleveland signed Labor Day into law but
still was voted out of office in 1894
In 1898 the head of the American Federation of Labor described Labor Day as
"the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward,
when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...
that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of
labor for a holiday,
but upon which they may touch shoulders in
marching phalanx and feel the stronger for
it."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/september96/labor_day_9-2.html
[Maybe Cleveland was right? J ]
For me there is a bit of irony in the holiday,
For it seems to me it’s the common man and woman who are still working
on labor day,
while it’s the well to do and governmental employees who have
the day off.
For the wealthy Labor traditionally marks the end of summer.
Many folks have planned their last get-a-ways and
if they are not slipping out of town making plans to take advantage of
the holiday on Monday.
So I thought it might be fun to talk about work on the eve of taking a
day off.
Are you working to live,
Or are you living to work?
Today I want you to understand that work is a gift of God and work is a part of
God’s plan for your life.
Our culture has so changed over the past 120 years that far too many Americans
think of work as something to be avoided if possible or if one has to work,
endured so one can do what they want on a day off.
http://bibtheo.blogspot.com/2007/09/labor-day-reflections-on-work.html
“Your work is a huge part of God’s plan for your life, and
God intends the Spirit to fill and energize” your workplace through you.
(Ortberg, The Me I Want To Be, p. 219)
Exodus 20:9-10 (NIV)
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
Everyone you read about in the Bible worked.
I recall putting in writing my thought that since everything in The Garden of
Eden was righteous that Adam didn’t even have to work.
My theology professor Dr. H. Ray Dunning was quick to point out that I was
sadly mistaken,
and requested that I ground any of my further speculations on
scripture.
Genesis 2:15 (MSG)
God took the Man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order.
Working is part of being human.
God made us and gave us a task to do.
When we are doing what God created us to do work is a joy.
When we work we create.
When we work we add value.
When we work we keep things in order.
When we are doing what God created us to do work is energizing,
It exhilarating, its life giving.
But then sin enters the picture, everything is effected by sin, even work.
Work becomes other than what it was meant to be,
A source of significance, and meaning and fulfillment,
Work becomes difficult
Genesis 3:17-19 (MSG)
“…you'll be working in pain all your life long. 18 The ground will sprout thorns and weeds, you'll get your food the hard way, Planting and tilling and harvesting, 19 sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk, Until you return to that ground yourself, dead and buried; you started out as dirt, you'll end up dirt."
Here’s my speculation—when you are working outside the area God created you to
work in, work is a pain.
Work becomes drudgery and monotony
Would it be outlandish to say that for a majority of Americans work is
“simply as a means to an end: it provides beer money or a fat retirement
pension or [my idea of] a better life?”
http://www.cdomaha.com/files/Theology%20of%20Work%20-%20Cru%20Press.pdf
When you are working outside the area God created you to work in
All you are really doing is working “make money to do what you really want
to do.”
http://richjohnson.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/towards-a-theology-of-work-4/
You’re working “so that your time off can be better.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/101950/A-Theology-of-Work
If you believe that God created you,
Then you must realize that God hard wired you with certain strengths,
You are predisposed with certain talents and abilities to do certain
things.
When you are not working in those areas of strength and ability,
working in the area you were designed to work in,
then all you have is a job not a vocation,
and work is what you do in order to live.
You spend your life for houses, cars, food, clothing and a vacation,
You are a consumer, not a producer,
And if you let yourself consider the situation,
You realize it doesn’t amount to dirt.
Is your job, life producing or life draining?
If its life draining, you need to hear the good news of the gospel.
Galatians 3:13 (NIV)
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us …
Sin created the possibility for work to be a curse to you,
But Jesus redeems us from that curse.
When you accept the fact that your job is only a way to make a living,
When you believe that only Jesus can redeem you to make a life
When you commit yourself to only following Jesus as His disciple
Then God accepts your faith, not matter how small it might be,
And makes it possible for you to no longer live under the curse.
One of the benefits of being out from under the curse,
Is that you are given the opportunity to start working in the areas that God
created you to work in.
You are given the opportunity to use your strengths, abilities, talents and
gifts for others.
It may be hard, it may be difficult, you may work a lot of hours,
but work is satisfying, it has meaning, it has purpose.
The good news is that free of the curse
“..we [can] invest our abilities to create value on the earth,
to plant and build and write and organize and heal and invent in ways
that bless people and
make the earth flourish.” (Ortberg, p. 222)
The good news is that free of the curse
“work is a form of love.” (Ortberg, p. 222)
You work because you know it meets the needs of others.
Work becomes ministry.
Work is no longer a job,
Work becomes a calling, a vocation.
Work is a gift through which you glorify God,
Through which you make His presence known.
Doing your calling, fulfilling your vocation,
is part of God’s plan of redemption.
The good news is that free from the curse
you give yourself wholeheartedly to your calling.
Free from the curse work is a calling and being a calling that means
there is someone doing the calling.
Colossians 3:23-24 (MSG)
Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, 24 confident that you'll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you're serving is Christ.
God has called you to a task.
Your work becomes an expression of your heart.
Your work is something you are passionate about.
Your work becomes something God wants you to do.
The good news is that free from the curse
Work is an act of worship,
An act of prayer,
An act of expressing gratitude,
Your way to evangelize,
Your way to make disciples.
In the Gospel according to John, the Apostle recounts a very special prayer Jesus
prayed to the Father, part of it includes this statement:
John 17:18 (MSG)
In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world.
Having committed yourself to following Jesus, to being His disciple,
you have a mission, you have a calling, you have a vocation,
and one of the ways you fulfill that mission is through the work that
you do.
When you are not working in your mission field,
Work is a pain.
When you are working in your mission field
Work is glorious.
Work in sacred
One of the benefits of being born again is that Jesus liberates you from working for
a living and releases you into living for work.
A vocation is a gift of God that when you work in it you come alive.
You bring God’s presence with you into the work place.
With God’s presence comes God’s agenda of redemption and
righteousness.
Your work is God using you to make things the way He
intends for them to be.
As you work in your area of calling,
You are advancing the Kingdom.
There is passion and joy and life.
Six days you shall work.
Six days you are to work fulfilling your mission by using your God
given strengths, and abilities.
Then on the seventh day you rest,
Because work is hard and you need to recharge your
physical, mental, emotional and spiritual tanks.
On the seventh day you honor God for allowing you to partner with
Him in His great plan of salvation through the work He’s given
you to do.
Believer if your motivation for work is
“I owe, I owe so off to work I go,”
Let me suggest that you need to practice the 7th habit of a disciple,
Contemplation.
You need to pull away from the rat race,
And get some alone time with God.
Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what it is that you have
been created to do.
Its probably something that you are already passionate about.
Its’ probably something that at one time or another felt
drawn to but Satan threw up so many road blocks
that you gave up and lost your heart.
What you were created to do makes you feel alive when you are doing
it.
It creates value.
It gives you a sense of meaning and purpose.
If you’re in a job, all it does is make money and often not enough of it.
If you are in your calling, it creates righteousness.
Now a word of caution, don’t quite the Day Job until God releases you into your
calling.
After years of working a job,
You’re probably well entrenched in the culture and may have to
continue working the job until you are free to work your
calling.
You may need to acquire some new skills or training to prepare you for your
vocation.
There are all kinds of ways God can fund you,
One of them is working a job to pay for all that
vocational preparation.
Basically what I am saying is don’t take a leap of faith until you can’t help
but take it.
But don’t let working for a living keep you trapped in a job that
is not your calling.
One last observation,
The Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth that whatever they do,
they were to do it to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31)
I think that the power of God is so great that if you decided to take your job,
And offer it up for His glory, that God can transform what you have
been doing to make ends meet,
into your assignment as His ambassador.
You’ll see your job differently,
Not as a way to make money,
But as a means God is using to make a difference in the
world.
I think many jobs can become vocations,
And I have unfortunately seen callings and vocations become jobs,
The difference is if you do what you do for the glory of God,
Or for your own agenda.
Today on the eve of the holiday that we don’t work to celebrate working,
I hope you have a new concept of what work is really all about.
Work is a gift from God through which you partner with Him to
change the world.
I hope you’ve been awakened to the fact that if you feel your job is just a rut,
And a rut is just a very long grave,
Then you may be laboring in an area other than the one God
created you for.
I hope you begin to see your job, not as a way to make a living,
but as a calling, a vocation, a way to make a life.
I hope that tomorrow God will truly help you celebrate Labor Day.