I get weekly e-articles from a website called Revol and 9/10 times I usually skim them, if I even get as far as opening one of them. I might have even tried stopping my subscription once or twice, but nonetheless they keep appearing in my inbox. Well today, I opened one of them. I read it. And I was blessed. Hope you will be too:
“Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.” -- Marc Chagall
In the beginning, Adam and Eve chose not to believe. Our lives have been toil since. But not just in the physical and material realm.
Our fall in the Garden of Eden incurred the curse of work. The earth resists us, and we labor for enough food to eat today. Tomorrow the cycle recycles and we begin it again.
No day arrives when we say, “I have done enough. My work is finished.”
We always need more.
Work’s struggle appeared to fall on men alone in the Eden curses, while women’s lives demanded another kind of work: pain in childbirth and a male world order. Today, many women seek freedom in competition with those men in multiple arenas. The curse compounds.
Since the morning of time, we’ve worked. Doing so remains necessary. Yet Jesus unveiled the true nature of God’s work. He told us that belief is God’s great task for humanity. Because God has said he loves us, and that he meets our needs, we alone are not responsible for them. Believing this involves work from the very outset.
God told Adam and Eve that if they didn’t listen to him, they’d perish. They did, and we do. Through toil and the lie that we alone care for ourselves, we die every day. The struggle and isolation steal our life; we need his words as daily sustenance because we need his friendship, his company.
“Work to believe,” Jesus says. “Work to believe that God cares, speaks, and listens. You’ve worked mistakenly far too long, believing you’re alone. Come back to your original purpose, and walk with God once more. Believe him and in me, that we’re here and that we love you.”
A curse exists. It is toil, sweat and death. And all of them separate us from our maker. Oftentimes, we feel we know little else than this curse. Yet on a hill called Calvary, Jesus bore our curse that we might walk away from it.
The curse still tells us that we’ll work through sweat to eat bread from the ground. We’ll then die. Jesus tells us that he is the bread we really need. But he offers a bread we cannot slice and butter, he offers a nourishment for something more eternal than our bodies. When we believe this and seek nourishment in him and his presence, we’ll begin to live. We’ll leave behind the fears that drive us to care for ourselves all our days.
He tells us to believe in him, to believe this. No wonder he calls it the work of God.
What is your idea of God’s work?
Have you come to a place of believing that feels like labor?
What does believing look like from Jesus’ point of view?
©2006 revol
The Beginning and End of Work.
“Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.” -- Marc Chagall
In the beginning, Adam and Eve chose not to believe. Our lives have been toil since. But not just in the physical and material realm.
Our fall in the Garden of Eden incurred the curse of work. The earth resists us, and we labor for enough food to eat today. Tomorrow the cycle recycles and we begin it again.
No day arrives when we say, “I have done enough. My work is finished.”
We always need more.
Work’s struggle appeared to fall on men alone in the Eden curses, while women’s lives demanded another kind of work: pain in childbirth and a male world order. Today, many women seek freedom in competition with those men in multiple arenas. The curse compounds.
Since the morning of time, we’ve worked. Doing so remains necessary. Yet Jesus unveiled the true nature of God’s work. He told us that belief is God’s great task for humanity. Because God has said he loves us, and that he meets our needs, we alone are not responsible for them. Believing this involves work from the very outset.
God told Adam and Eve that if they didn’t listen to him, they’d perish. They did, and we do. Through toil and the lie that we alone care for ourselves, we die every day. The struggle and isolation steal our life; we need his words as daily sustenance because we need his friendship, his company.
“Work to believe,” Jesus says. “Work to believe that God cares, speaks, and listens. You’ve worked mistakenly far too long, believing you’re alone. Come back to your original purpose, and walk with God once more. Believe him and in me, that we’re here and that we love you.”
A curse exists. It is toil, sweat and death. And all of them separate us from our maker. Oftentimes, we feel we know little else than this curse. Yet on a hill called Calvary, Jesus bore our curse that we might walk away from it.
The curse still tells us that we’ll work through sweat to eat bread from the ground. We’ll then die. Jesus tells us that he is the bread we really need. But he offers a bread we cannot slice and butter, he offers a nourishment for something more eternal than our bodies. When we believe this and seek nourishment in him and his presence, we’ll begin to live. We’ll leave behind the fears that drive us to care for ourselves all our days.
He tells us to believe in him, to believe this. No wonder he calls it the work of God.
What is your idea of God’s work?
Have you come to a place of believing that feels like labor?
What does believing look like from Jesus’ point of view?
©2006 revol