The Work We Do

DAILY BYTE

Have you ever sat at your desk or been on the job trying to complete a task, and all of a sudden you stop in your tracks and wonder what on earth you’re doing? If you’re retired, unemployed, or studying, and you’re going about the daily grind – do you ever suddenly stop, about to put a shoe into the refrigerator or to write down something so that you don’t forget, and you pause, confused, and you think – why am I doing this? What is the point of the work I’m doing?

We sit twiddling our thumbs, or we rush around doing tons of things, but we’re actually just one fish in a big pond of the world’s messiness. What is the purpose of any of this?

I confess, that even as a minister, I sometimes slip into thoughts like these, wondering if I’m just going through the motions – wondering if I really even believe in what I’m doing – wondering if any of it actually matters...

In the midst of a time like that, a friend of mine played me a song by Christian singer/songwriter Sara Groves. It’s a song called, fittingly, “Why it matters.” Sara wrote the song when wondering some of those very questions – wondering how her work making music and being a wife and mother really mattered in a world that seemed so overrun by difficulty.

But she wrote the song after hearing a story about a man who lived in Bosnia during the war, and while the sounds of battle were ringing out all around him, he sat in the middle of it and played and played on his cello.

It’s a story that caused Sara Groves to reflect on her life and write about how her work making music mattered, too – how in the midst of the world’s darkness, her life and her work could be a song of protest – a vessel of light.

She writes that everything in life – from work making music to sharing love with a family – everything down to even a single cup of water matters. It is all part of a bigger picture, even when our life feels very small in comparison to our problems and the world’s problems.

This week, we’re going to explore the expansiveness of that life. We’re going to look at why our work is actually worship. It’s a part of something bigger than ourselves, and it matters. So stay tuned...

FOCUS READING

Genesis 2:15-16 (NRSV)

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden...