Work, as you know, is the thing we do to make ends meet. There’s an old Beatles song (most of us my age know who I’m talking about), that says “It’s been a hard day’s night, and I’ve been working like a dog”. I’m sure many of you feel the same way sometimes.
After God exposed Adam and Eve’s sin, he expelled them from Eden and in Genesis 3:23 He says, “therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground…”. Because of sin it would now be required of mankind to toil throughout his life to sustain his physical life.
Most people know little about the presence of two lives, physical life and spiritual life. One life is characterized and sustained by working, the other is a “gift from God” (Romans 6:23). I could go off on a tangent very easily about all the people I know or have known who seem to get by just as well as I do by not working but that doesn’t change the fact that God’s way is for people to sustain their physical life by working. Remember, all honest work is honorable in God’s eyes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a laborer or a brain surgeon or a housewife raising the children, it’s all classified as work.
When I was a child, Mom would get her old flannel board and little cut-out characters and teach my brother and myself bible stories. Flannel boards are gone now, it’s all high-tech computer stuff, you know, its “digital”. Back then, the stories were all the usual ones, Adam and Eve, Moses and the Red Sea, Joshua and the walls of Jericho, and on and on. For some reason one particular story I always enjoyed and remembered was about a man named Benaiah.
Benaiah was one of a group of about 30 men who had a particular “skill set”—they were “mighty men” (2 Samuel 23:8-39) dedicated to King David. Benaiah was tasked with a very difficult job, or you might say his workday was unusual to say the least. In 2 Samuel 23:20 it says, “he killed a lion in the midst of a pit on a snowy day”. I know we all have had a hard day at work but nothing like Benaiah’s day! He was faced with a hard job in a hard place in a hard time. Perhaps some of you like me have felt this way about the work you are involved with. To kill a lion in itself is a hard job, an adult lion can weigh as much as 400 pounds and it doesn’t care what kind of meat it eats, but Benaiah prevailed, because he was dedicated to his King. Not only was it a hard job, but it was also in a hard place, in a pit. A pit is round, no square corner to defend yourself, no place to hide, no place to run to. Just you, the lion, and your dependance on God. So now you have a hard job, in a hard place and it begins to snow, a hard time. Winter brings snow, snow brings moisture, and moisture plus dirt in a pit brings mud and slippery conditions. Not ideal for battling a lion.
Life and work are like this; life brings good times and bad times. Work can be enjoyable, and it can be tedious and downright excruciating, but it’s God’s way of providing for us. The next time you crawl out of bed and dread facing the coming day at work, just focus on the reason for your work. Just like Benaiah was dedicated to king David, your dedication to King Jesus should motivate you to provide for your loved ones to sustain you and those under your care in this life. John 9:4 declares: “I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day, the night cometh, when no man can work”.
Vince Lombardi, the great Green Bay Packers football coach said, “The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work”. And so it is, in the twilight of life when I am looking back and assessing my life, I am happy I worked and did it Gods way.