Break

Easy

So this week has been Spring Break. As a homeschool family, not much changed for us but I have noticed a lot of people on vacations. It is a great thing to get away. It is especially great to have a break, not just from school or work, but from the craziness of this last year. I believe I have noticed that in many of the photos I have seen. People breathing a little easier and worrying less. The Lord did not make our body to exist on high alert all the time. The strain and stress of life can take its toll, and we just need a break. One interesting problem can be that we become so accustomed to our high stress life that taking it easy becomes hard work. In this confused state of imbalance the individual isn’t able to relax even when resting. This propels us into a cycle of never getting truly refreshed, always tired and always needing to take a break even when we just had one. You have probably experienced something like what I am talking about when your mind can’t quit and your heart is racing and you are on an emotional rollercoaster. The solution is not as easy as just taking a break or a breath. We have to learn the hard work of resting.

Work Related

Much or this kind of stress is work related or derived from the specific responsibilities that we have in our lives. (I’ll let you make your own list.) But would you believe that work is a blessing and that your work as purpose. Notice I didn’t say your work has a purpose. I said your work  has purpose. What I mean is that your work has the purpose for which God made you and work. God made Adam and gave him a job. This career path was established before the fall and the entrance of sin into the world. Work was a part of Adam’s purpose as an image bearer of God in the creation. The work involved dominion over the earth and animals as well as care for these things. 

With the addition of sin and subtraction of spiritual life, humanities relation with the work changed. The work got hard! In Genesis 3, God tells Adam that instead of the earth being his partner it would now be his adversary. Also, instead of the work being pleasant it would require effort  (Genesis 3). From now on, if Adam is going to eat he must work. If he is going to care for his wife, he is going to work. If he is going to care for his children, he must work.

And it is not just the Old Testament that emphasizes the need for work. In 2 Thessalonians 3 the Apostle Paul says that if someone does not work he should not eat! (2 Thessalonians 3)  In this text Paul is referring to those who are able but idle. He wants them to follow the example that he and his missionary companions had set for them of labor and toil.

Rest

Why would God make Adam’s work hard? Was this just punishment or does it have a deeper purpose? Also why does the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul give such a insistant command to the idle or lazy?

I think that God does have a purpose for work and for work being hard in His redemptive plan. Now this is just a short blog and not an exhaustive theology of work, but I have a point to make. I think that hard work serves us and God in His redemptive purpose. I believe that the necessity and intensity of our work is meant to cause us to crave the rest that we need. We all are like little children fighting against the nap that we don’t want to take but work guides us to our time and place of rest.

God made us to work and to rest! However, the rest we almost need is not a trip, time off, or even a great nap. No, the rest we really need is a person. The truth is that the impossible task that we cannot accomplish is our own salvation. We cannot work long enough or hard enough to be justified or sanctified or glorified based on our effort and strength. 

But God has loved us by giving us the rest that we desperately need in the person of Jesus Christ! When God’s people were wandering in the wilderness they needed rest but found none because through their unbelief they could not access the rest in the promised land. But the Hebrew writer in the New Testament tells us that the way to that rest is open by faith. If God gave us lives of ease and relaxation, no doubt it would only be as we went our stubborn and rebellious own way into the fires and flames of hell.

Work drives us to the rest that is ours as believes in Jesus Christ. Read Hebrews 3:7-4:13 and consider Jesus' invitation “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

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