Try Not to Work

For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Ephesians 2:10

Some morning, try to get up and spend the whole day without working. Unless it is one of those hyper-rare rainy days when the only demand is a good book or all-day ball games, work begins to call to us. We don’t even have to look for it. It finds us. We feel restless—in an okay way—if we aren't working. We begin to put our hands or minds to something in order to improve, refine, change, move, or arrange it. I’m not even talking about the I-feel-guilty-when-I-relax kind of work. This is the life-was-made-for-us-to-sculpt work. It is what we do when we are left to our master code. It is what our world needs from us. It is the basis upon which the uniqueness of humanity was built. Other things in creation expend effort. Effort for the purpose of creating is work. We were created to work.

We work to create. We need to work to create lots of important things. Our work generates value, worth, beauty, space, presence, or knowledge that can’t create itself. And yet it all needs to be brought forth. We get up in the morning and work to make coffee because it does not brew itself. We drive to our jobs to create income in exchange for our effort because money doesn't grow on trees. We layer and brush and hammer and scrape to create form that would never reveal itself. We pluck and breathe and strum and compose to coax feeling from noise.

All of this and more is our purpose. We are God’s work. Our work is the creative interface of God in our world. And for some reason we are trusted with it. It was given to us to work out.

Today, the red clay of your effort has the very breath of God in it. It is God’s work waiting for you to create. May you find God’s purpose and yours, in your work!

QUESTION FOR FURTHER REFLECTION: What efforts in your life need some yet undiscovered creative purpose? Think about how the mundane drudgery of your everyday work might become sacred simply by realizing that God has given it to you to create something better.

PRAYER: Dear God, breathe a sense of your purpose into our work today. Help us embrace it as fulfillment of your divine invitation to join you in your work. Help us to use it to do the good things you are doing. In Jesus name, Amen!

Featured image by Tim Miller. Used with Permission. Source via Flickr.