Well, again, let me say welcome to all of you, and in particular those of you who may
be joining us for the first time.
We're glad to gather here as we do every week.
We're glad for this time in the service when we can turn our attention to God's Word.
We've been in a series over the last few weeks called Foundations, where we've been asking
foundational questions about what it means to be human beings, how to make sense of
the world that we live in, and ultimately how to understand the God who made all of this.
The idea being that if we understand how things were made and why they were made, then we'll
know how to make sense of them today, including all of the various aspects of our lives.
And so last week we started looking at this rhythm that God establishes in creation, and
this rhythm is a part of what it means to be human.
It's a part of our design to live out this rhythm, and that is the rhythm of rest and work, Sabbath
rest and work.
And as we said last week, working all of the time dehumanizes us.
It's dehumanizing.
And working none of the time, never working, also dehumanizes us.
That what we see in creation is that we were created for a rhythm of both rest and work.
And last week we took a look at the first part of this, Sabbath rest, and this week we're
looking at the second component, which is our work.
And for most of us here in D.C., when I bring up work, I think I don't have to convince you
that work is absolutely central to our lives.
It is central to how we organize our time.
It's central to how we think of our identities.
I think we probably, if we're honest, spend more time working or thinking about work than
virtually anything else.
One of the curses that we all seem to have fallen under is that when we are at work, we
are thinking about everything but work.
And when we're away from work, we're thinking about nothing but work.
It's almost perverse, and yet I think this is true for all of us.
I think we said last week that the Washington Post said this year that we are, Washington,
D.C., rather, that we have the second highest average work week, the second longest average
work week of any city in the United States.
That's pretty impressive, depending on your scale of impressiveness.
I think most of us, if we're honest, work pretty much determines everything else about
our lives.
It determines our relationships.
It determines our priorities.
I think for most of us, work is what brought us to D.C., and for those of us who leave, it
will probably be work or something work-related that takes us away.
So I think it's obvious that we need to reevaluate on a major level our relationship with our
work.
And this starts by asking, what's the foundation?
How should we think about our jobs, our vocation?
What does our work have to do with being human?
And that's why we're looking at Genesis chapter 2.
We're looking at two verses in particular.
Chapter 2, verse 5, and then we'll skip down and look at verse 15.
So I'll read those two verses.
When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung
up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to
work the ground.
We'll stop right there.
We'll move down to verse 15.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work and to keep it.
So we're going to look at these two verses, and we're going to see three things about
our work.
We're going to see the necessity of work.
We're going to see the distortion of work.
How does it become so distorted?
And then lastly, the rebalancing of our work.
So the necessity of work, the distortion of work, and the rebalancing of work in our lives,
how that happens.
Let's pray.
Lord, we do thank you and recognize that you not only promise your presence, but you
promise your voice.
And we know that apart from you, these would be merely human words, interpreting words
on a page, but that through your Spirit, you actually speak through your Word to us.
And, Lord, I know I need to hear from you tonight, and we all need to hear from you tonight, and
we pray that by your grace we would, for our good and ultimately for your glory.
In your Son's name, amen.
So first of all, as we look at these passages, we see the necessity of work, that work is actually
a necessary component of a healthy life and what it means to be a human being.
Essentially, we see this, that in the beginning there was work.
If you look at the story of creation, we see, first of all, God going to work.
And we've looked at this in previous weeks.
We see God going to work precisely by what?
He encounters chaos and void, in other words, undifferentiated matter, and He goes to work.
And He begins to order the chaos.
He begins to bring order.
He creates the light and separates it from the dark, day and night.
He creates the expanse above, the waters above and the waters below and an expanse in between.
And then He creates the land and separates it from the sea.
And we see God ordering creation.
And the fruit of God's labor is that chaos and death and meaninglessness becomes a cosmos.
We see domains established where life can not only exist, but it can flourish.
Ideal conditions for the flourishing of all manner of life.
This is the work that God's doing.
And we see here that God is in some ways the ultimate entrepreneur, creating something that
wasn't there before.
He's in the business of creation.
But then very quickly in Genesis chapter 2 verse 5, the first problem arises in creation.
And that problem is in verse 5.
Everything's in place.
Everything's good.
Everything's been pronounced good.
And yet, there is no one to work the ground.
That's a problem.
And we need to understand the significance of this.
That the story actually begins by God creating and ordering a world that is by definition unfinished.
It's by definition incomplete.
See, He could have created the world as a complete thing.
But He chooses to create a world that is full of potential.
But that potential, the stuff of creation, is only in seed form.
It's an acorn.
And it needs to be cultivated.
It needs to be built.
It needs to grow into the fullness of what it was created to be.
And for that, God creates human beings.
And that's a fascinating departure from the other ancient Near Eastern myths.
Which essentially state that the gods, normally through violence, slitting the throats of other gods and filleting their corpses and slinging them into the sky.
That's a Numa Elish.
And the gods are, you know, work is so far beneath them that they need someone to uphold and to maintain this.
And so, human beings, these lowly creatures are created to sort of, because gods would never work.
Or we see the Greek and Roman philosophers abhorring the idea of work and saying,
you should do whatever you can to not work.
Because it's all about the richness of the mind and the cultivation of the mind and labor, special menial labor.
That's below you.
And yet we see here that God is actually doing work, and then he's creating human beings to continue the same kind of work.
This work of creating and cultivating and actualizing the potential of the world that he's made.
And this, I think, not only departs from the ancient stories, it departs from our modern myth of a happy life.
Most people I went to school with said, I want to go to school, I want to make a lot of money, I want to retire as soon as I can.
And the goal of all this is so that I can not work.
You know, retire as early as you can so that you can do everything that you want to do.
The assumption being nobody in their right mind would actually want to work.
And there's a funny insight, I've always loved that movie WALL-E,
and the statement that it makes, or rather the picture that it paints of what human beings would look like
if we took a permanent hiatus from work for multiple generations.
These humans have, I won't say evolved, devolved into slug-like creatures that have tiny little baby arms and legs,
and they can no longer stand on their own strength, and so they're carried around all day on floating chairs.
And one of the great victories of the movie is when the captain is actually able to stand up on his own two feet,
more physical exertion than he's probably ever done in his life.
So human beings are actually created to work, and the Bible actually says that God made us and this world in such a way that our work is necessary.
It's necessary for us.
Work is as much a part of your basic human needs as food or sleep.
You're created to need work.
So we need it, and also the work is necessary for the world, because God made a world that needs our care.
It needs to be developed and maintained by human beings.
So this is the way God designed things.
But, as you're probably thinking, this is not exactly the beautiful, harmonious way in which the world actually functions today.
And you're right.
God created things to function this way, but things have become, you might say, a bit distorted.
Our work has become distorted.
We just looked at how work was created to be, but that assumes that human beings have a right relationship with God.
And if human beings did, then this is how work would function in the world.
But the problem is, human beings on their own don't have a right relationship with God.
And here's the simple fact.
When your relationship with God is distorted, all of your other relationships become distorted.
It's just simply the way it works.
The distortion flows into every other area of life, including our relationship with our work.
And apart from God, there are two primary ways, I think, that our work becomes distorted.
It becomes distorted when we believe, or we come to believe more and more, that our work is meaningless.
That's a distortion.
Apart from God.
And also, apart from God, I think that some of us can tend toward the distortion of thinking that our work is a source of meaning.
So I want to look at both of these.
I think these are two of the primary distortions that affect most of us in how we think about our jobs.
The first distortion, apart from God, is that we believe that our work is meaningless.
I think some of us, as we're listening to this and maybe rolling your eyes and thinking, oh, all this talk about work,
and the last thing I want to do on a Sunday night in my last few precious hours,
before I go to sleep and have to wake up earlier than I would like and go to work,
the last thing I want to do is think about work.
And why do you think that?
Because when you go to work, you think, you look at all of the work that you do,
you look at the fact that you're sitting behind a desk all day,
maybe answering emails, and maybe they're not even your own emails.
Maybe it's somebody else's emails.
Or you're a part of this massive bureaucracy,
and you look at the labor that you pour in, and it feels like water on sand,
and you think, I'm not making any difference, any dent, any impact.
My boss doesn't even know my name.
I feel like a number.
And some of us think this, and some of us feel meaningless in our jobs.
We struggle to be motivated.
And, you know, when you feel like that,
it's tempting to begin to fantasize about other jobs that would give you more meaning.
It's tempting to begin to think about jobs in terms of the relative meaningfulness
that they might offer you.
You may think of certain jobs as being more meaningful,
and other jobs as being less meaningful,
whether you think of sacred versus secular jobs,
or you think of helping professions,
or you think of nonprofit versus for-profit,
or all of the different, I would say, artificial divisions in vocation
in terms of meaningfulness,
but we begin to think that way.
But here's the key as we understand creation.
All work has meaning,
and all work has dignity.
But here's the key.
It's your work does not have meaning because of what you produce.
What you produce has value,
and hopefully it's adding value somewhere,
but that's not the source of the meaningfulness of your work.
Your work doesn't have meaning because of what it produces.
It has meaning because of the one whom it reflects.
That's where the meaning come from.
So our work reflects a God who made all things and sustains all things,
and a God who made us to reflect His image
in the sustaining, the cultivating, the creating out of what He's made.
So just as we see God bringing order to chaos,
making it possible for life to flourish,
we continue in the work of what?
Bringing order to chaos.
So those of you who work in NGO worlds,
or in non-profit,
or international development spheres,
those of you who do that kind of work,
you are trying to get resources
from this place to this place.
You're looking and trying to understand the problems
that result in poverty and oppression,
and you're trying to funnel resources
and to develop strategies to what?
To bring order to chaos.
You're bringing order to chaos.
You're trying to create a society
or to create a community
where life can flourish better than it is.
If you start a business,
or you code and you build software,
or you develop strategies and different ways of thinking,
you're taking the stuff of creation,
and you're making something that wasn't there before.
You're reflecting the image of a creator God.
When you do that, you say,
well, I build websites.
That's an act of creation?
Yes.
That's an act of creation.
If you manage people or you manage teams,
you're bringing order to priorities
and people to maximize and draw out their potential.
If you teach,
teachers, their whole job is to cultivate
like you would cultivate a garden
and to draw the potential out of their students.
musicians take disparate, disordered sound
and they bring order and produce beautiful melody.
Artists take disparate stuff
and they order it and create beautiful things
like paintings and sculptures.
People who work in hospitality or customer service
create what?
Experiences.
You create encounters.
You have the opportunity to serve
and to treat another human being
with humanizing dignity
even when they're behaving
in an undignified way.
People who are administrative assistants
serve and empower those that they work for.
You bring order to details.
You bring order to emails.
You bring order to schedules.
You facilitate relationships and connections
and enhance productivity.
You're like the fertilizer
that makes everybody else do their job better.
Right?
I actually believe that stay-at-home parents
and homemakers are probably the clearest reflection
of the divine image
in that they are actually creating
and maintaining a place where life can flourish,
a home.
They're nurturing and sustaining human life
for those who have children.
They're forming the souls
and the characters of human beings.
All of these kinds of work,
and these are just tiny,
just a few examples,
they're all ways in which we,
in our work,
are reflecting a creator God.
But the key to sensing
and seeing the meaning in your work,
the key is this,
don't measure meaning by what you produce.
Measure meaning by the one whom you reflect.
Don't measure meaning by what you produce.
Measure meaning by the one whom you reflect.
In a fallen world,
as Genesis 3 says,
there will be thorns and thiscerals.
There will be futility.
There will be resistance.
There will be days and stretches of time
when our productivity is very low
or even in the negative.
Don't measure it by that.
Measure it by the one whom you reflect
when you're working in the image
of Him who made you.
So that's distortion number one,
coming to believe, apart from God,
that my work has no meaning.
All work has meaning.
Distortion number two
goes in the other direction,
believing that our work
is actually the source of meaning.
My work gives me meaning.
It gives me identity.
And this, in D.C.,
when the first or second question you're asked
is what do you do,
there is that immediate assumption
that the most important thing about you,
maybe even more so than your name,
is your career.
Are you somebody that I should be talking to?
Or should I excuse myself
to get another drink from the bar
and find somebody more important?
What you do defines who you are in our culture.
You know, there's that great, often used,
but never overused example, in my opinion,
of chariots of fire.
And Harold Abraham,
you've heard many preachers, including me,
use this a zillion times,
and it's because it's a great example.
Harold, that's the disclaimer,
Harold Abraham is a runner.
He and Eric Little are sort of rivals.
And Harold Abraham is,
he runs the dash,
and he says of the dash,
he says that when that gun goes off,
he says,
I have ten seconds to justify my existence.
And I think it's a great example
because I do think that in many ways
that reflects the distortion
that occurs in our hearts over time.
That my ability to do this thing
justifies my existence.
If I'm not able to do this thing,
then what am I?
You know, especially people in the helping professions.
You get all these degrees
and all these credentials that say,
this person's good at helping.
And then you get a job in social work.
And you try to help people.
And you realize how hard it is.
And you realize that a lot of times
people don't appreciate you.
And they actually resent
that they even need help.
And you give what you think is great advice,
learned advice,
advice that you've read in books
and learned from prior experience
of what would be good
in this or that situation.
And they reject your advice.
How dare they?
And you think, well,
what worth am I?
So we sacrifice our relationships.
We sacrifice sanity.
We sacrifice our own health for our work.
We're never content.
We're always wondering about other jobs
that might do a better job at justifying us.
Many of us wait,
many of us wait
to even think about getting married.
You wait to even think about getting married
until our career is secure.
And then we begin to look around
and realize that the pool
of eligible partners
has dwindled somewhat since undergrad.
And we wonder, what happened?
You know, for those of us
who are unemployed or underemployed,
you struggle not just with a lack of income,
you struggle with a lack of identity.
But the problem is,
our work was never meant to be
a source of meaning in the first place.
And if we spend our life
trying to find meaning,
identity, purpose in our jobs,
it will lead to profound disillusionment.
The late Lens Redding
is a great example of this.
He is a New Zealand-based
or was a New Zealand-based
art director, advertising guru.
By every standard,
he had achieved success
in a very cool and sexy field.
And he died at age 52
from inoperable esophageal cancer.
And after being diagnosed,
things began to shift for him.
And he wrote an essay
that was published after his death
called,
A Short Lesson in Perspective.
So I want to read an excerpt from this,
and it's edited somewhat for language.
He says,
And here's the thing.
It turns out I didn't actually like my old life
nearly as much as I thought I did.
I know this now
because I occasionally catch up
with my old colleagues and workmates.
They fall over each other
to enthusiastically show me
the latest project they're working on,
ask my opinion,
proudly show off their technical prowess,
which is not inconsiderable.
I find myself glazing over
but politely listening
as they brag about
who's had the least sleep
and the most takeaway food.
I haven't seen my wife since January.
I can't feel my legs anymore.
I think I have scurvy.
But another three weeks
and we'll be done.
It's got to be done by then.
The client's going on holiday.
What do I think?
And he says,
What do I think?
I think you're all effing mad.
Deranged.
So disengaged from reality
it's not even funny.
It's an effing TV commercial.
Nobody cares.
And he says,
This has come as quite a shock,
I can tell you.
I think I've come to the conclusion
that the whole thing
was a bit of a con.
A scam.
An elaborate hoax.
Countless late nights and weekends.
Holidays.
Birthdays.
School recitals.
Anniversary dinners
were willingly sacrificed
at the altar of some intangible
but infinitely worthy higher cause.
It would all be worth it
in the long run.
This was the con.
Convincing myself
that there was nowhere I'd rather be
was just a coping mechanism.
I can see that now.
It wasn't really important
or of any consequence at all, really.
How could it be?
We were just shifting product.
Our product and the clients.
Just meeting the quota.
Feeding the beast,
as I called it on my more cynical days.
So was it worth it?
Well, of course not.
It turns out it was just advertising.
So the point is,
on the one hand,
I want to impress upon you
this fact that work,
our work,
all work,
has inherent dignity,
inherent meaning,
inherent worth.
But on the other hand,
our work can never be a source
of meaning
and of value
and of worth.
And that altar
that Lens Redding talks about,
that altar on which
so many of us sacrifice
so many things,
so many people,
so many possibilities,
that is an altar
to an empty idol.
And the idol of work
is just like any other idol.
It never, ever, ever promises,
or never, ever, ever delivers
what it promises.
So this brings us
to the third point then.
If that's the,
if work is necessary
and work does have
inherent meaning,
but that meaning,
it's not a source of meaning.
The meaning comes from the one
whom we reflect
when we work.
If these are true things,
then we have to ask,
how do we then rebalance
work?
Because I know myself,
and I know most of you
well enough to know
that I think that our
work lives are pretty
out of whack.
So knowing this,
how do we rebalance
work in our lives
and maintain this balance
over time
so that we don't
slide into meaningless despair,
so that we don't
sacrifice ourselves
on the altar of our jobs.
And this is actually
where last week's sermon
and this week
come together.
And for those of you
who weren't here last week,
I can sort of bring us
back up to speed on that,
that the only way
to have a healthy,
balanced work life
is if that life
is part of a larger rhythm
of work and rest,
work and Sabbath rest.
That's the only way.
And as we said last week,
Sabbath is much more
than just taking a day off.
Taking a day off
is kind of and can be
a counterfeit Sabbath
because it's not just
about taking a day off.
Sabbath means
ceasing from our work
so that we can celebrate
God's work.
It's a reorienting
of our souls.
Ceasing our work
so that we can celebrate
God's work.
And this only fully makes sense
when we look at Jesus Christ
because in Mark chapter 2,
verse 28,
Jesus says something profound.
He says,
I am the Lord of the Sabbath.
The Son of the Man
is Lord of the Sabbath.
What is He saying?
I'm the Lord of rest.
I'm the one to whom
the Sabbath points.
When the Sabbath
was established in creation,
it was a giant signpost
pointing to the rest
that I would one day
make possible.
So when Jesus dies on the cross
and He cries out,
it is finished,
He's not just talking
about His heart.
He's not just talking
about His earthly life.
When He cries out,
it is finished,
He's saying that He has now
accomplished everything necessary
to give us that rest.
He's done everything necessary
to reconcile us to God.
And in that reconciliation,
we know,
as we come into the embrace
of that God,
we know that we have found
the only place in the universe
where we can know
that everything's going to be okay,
that we don't have to strive
any longer,
that there's nothing
that we lack,
that our future is uncertain.
All of that is done away with.
And every Sabbath
is an opportunity
for us to gather
as we are now,
to cease from our work,
and if any of you
are working right now
on your devices,
cease just for right now.
Because right now,
at this minute,
it's an opportunity
for us to gather
as Christians
and to celebrate
the finished work of God
on our behalf,
to actually remember
that all of our hope
and all of our meaning
and all of our purpose
will never be found
in this world,
especially in our work,
and it can only be found
in Jesus.
So in light of this,
in light of the Lord
of the Sabbath
and what we have,
those of us who have come
to Him
and put our hope
not in our work
but in His finished work,
that's what makes you
a Christian.
In light of this,
what's a balanced perspective
on work actually look like?
What does it actually look like?
How should we think
about our work
as you go to work,
most of you,
tomorrow?
And I would say
a balanced perspective
on work looks like this.
It's all wrapped up
in the word
that the Bible uses
for work.
The word that the Bible
uses here in Genesis chapter 2
for work.
The Hebrew word
is avodah.
Avodah.
And this first appears
in our passage,
but it's used all
throughout the Old Testament.
And in the Old Testament,
if you look at all the ways
it's used,
if you do a word search,
you'll find something
pretty fascinating
and that is this word
has three interrelated usages.
It has three ways
or three ways
that it's translated
in the Old Testament.
It's translated as work
or labor
or career
or occupation.
That's the first meaning.
That's the one
that we're most familiar with.
But it's also used
to describe service
as in serving one another,
being a servant.
And then thirdly,
it's used to describe worship.
Worship.
So in the Bible,
what you see
in this one word
is that there is
a seamless connection,
a seamless understanding
of the relationship
between our work,
our career,
our vocation,
our call to serve
one another,
and our purpose
as worshipers of God.
And what we see
is that those aren't
three separate activities.
I don't worship on Sunday,
serve at the soup kitchen
on Wednesday,
and then work
Monday to Friday.
That instead,
my work
is a place
where I worship.
And my work
is a place
where I have opportunities
to serve
other people
and the Lord.
So work
and worship
and service,
they're all one and the same.
Your work
is your worship.
And for most of us,
your primary place
of ministry,
your primary place
of evangelism,
your primary place
of service,
your primary place
of bringing justice,
your primary place
of bringing glory to God
and worshiping the Lord,
the primary place
you're going to do that
is your job.
That's the primary place.
And so while we as a church
have ways
that we serve initiatives
like DUC 127,
while we encourage
our core groups
to come up with ways
that they want to serve
together in the community,
we never want to lose sight
of the fact
that your primary calling
is to the Lord Jesus Christ
and next to that
you are called
to a vocation
and that is the way
that God has built you
and provided you
an opportunity
to do His mission
in the world.
That is it.
And so if nothing else,
for all of our core groups
who, you know,
who think that they need
to come up with
an elaborate vision
for serving,
no, it is enough
for you to simply say
our group exists
to support and empower
our people
to see their jobs
as the primary way
that they serve
and worship the Lord.
That's a great focus
for a core group
because that is what
our vocation means,
Avodah.
And when you see someone
who lives this balance
of work and rest,
someone who has
their work life
in balance
and sees it as Avodah,
sees it as a way
to serve and to glorify God,
when you see a life
like that,
what you see is someone
who's been liberated
from their work
so that they may fully
enjoy their work.
And I'll just give you
two quick examples
to close
of people who have
this kind of understanding
of their Avodah,
their work.
The first is
the other character
in Chariots of Fire,
Eric Little.
We have Harold Abraham
who says,
I have ten seconds
to justify my existence,
and we have Eric Little,
a very talented runner.
And in the story,
one of the,
you know,
a medal race comes up.
It's a race
where they can medal,
but this medal race
is held on the Sabbath.
And so Eric Little,
follower of Jesus
that he is,
Sabbath keeper that he is,
says,
I'm not going to do it.
And he doesn't race.
And Harold Abraham
ends up racing,
ends up eventually winning
the medal
that he's worked
so long for,
but in the end
he realizes
it's just a medal.
And it doesn't satisfy him
the way he thought it would.
He's a lot like
Linz Redding
who says,
it's just a commercial.
It's just advertising.
It wasn't worth it.
And then by contrast,
you see Eric
who goes on to serve
and love the people of China
for years
before being put
in a Japanese prison camp
where he eventually dies.
And a few years ago
it was found out
that he was actually
given an opportunity
to leave that camp,
but he traded places
with a pregnant woman.
And so she went free
and he ended up
dying in the camp.
And the world
looks at a story like this
and says,
what a waste,
what a colossal waste.
But when Eric describes
the reason he runs,
it's not to get medals,
it's not to get fame,
it's not to get acclamation,
it's not to get money.
He says,
when I run,
I feel God's smile.
This is Avodah.
That's what it looks like
in a life.
And the second example,
the last example I'll give
is the life of Lilius Trotter.
We've been immersed
in this story,
this amazing story
of Lilius Trotter
because my wife
has actually made
a documentary
about Lilius Trotter,
so I may be a little biased,
but I think when you
see the story for yourself,
you will understand
the beauty of it.
And it will actually
be premiering here in D.C.
on February 6th
at the National Gallery of Art.
So that's pretty exciting.
So our church
will be a part of that.
But when you look
at the life of Lilius Trotter,
here's a woman
who was a very gifted painter
who was told
by the great art critic
of her day in England,
John Ruskin,
you can be England's
greatest living painter.
I have the power
to bestow that upon you,
and you have the talent.
I can open the right doors
for you,
make all the right connections,
one condition.
See, Lilius had been spending
a lot of her free time
serving the poor of London,
the women and the orphans.
And Ruskin saw this
as being in competition
with her art and said,
you have to stop that.
You have to leave all of that
and devote yourself
exclusively to your art.
And if you do that,
I will make you
England's greatest living painter.
She takes three days
of prayer and discernment
and ultimately refuses Ruskin.
But the greatest thing
about the story is
she doesn't actually give up
her vocation as a painter.
She continues to paint.
What she gives up is fame.
What she gives up
is the chance at notoriety.
She gives all that up,
not because fame
is inherently bad,
but because for her,
for her,
the sacrifice would mean
sacrificing what it means
to be faithful to God.
And when she had to choose,
she chose faithfulness
over fame.
And where that took her,
it doesn't need to take
all of us here,
but where it took her
is actually to North Africa.
And she spent the rest
of her life in total obscurity
as a missionary in Algeria.
Painting,
painting,
growing as an artist,
but painting not for the elite
art critics of England,
but rather painting
for an audience of one
in the margins of her journals.
Like Eric Little,
she had a balanced view
of her vocation.
She saw her work
as a way to serve others.
She actually used her painting
to illuminate Arab text
to try to convey
to the Arab world
the beauty of Jesus.
And she knew that they took
the word seriously.
They took the written word
very seriously.
And so she used her
watercolor abilities
to create beautiful tracts
that would tell people
about Jesus.
Because that's what she believed
that she was called to do.
So as we gather together tonight
on this Sabbath day,
may the Lord rebalance
the way we see our work.
that we would see it
as Avodah,
that we would see
that all of our work
reflects the God
who made us
in his image to work.
That we would see
how we're called
both to serve those around us
and to glorify God
in all that we do.
And I pray that we would all
gain a vision for that
and what it looks like
in our lives.
And Lord,
as we do ask you
to bless us in this,
we ask you to enable us,
as your word says,
to give us everything
that we need
to accomplish the work
that you've prepared
for us beforehand,
that we should walk
in those good works.
We pray for your,
not only your vision,
but also the empowering presence
of your spirit
to help us live
lives of faithfulness, Lord.
And we ask this
in your Son's holy name.
Amen.