Pre:
One of the things that has been bouncing around the internet recently is a little philosophical piece about something called “the dash.” If you read an obituary or look at a tombstone, you see a person’s name, with two dates, and a dash between them. The two dates of course are the person’s birth and death. And the dash represents a whole life lived between those two dates. When you think about it, the dash is a whole lot more important than the two dates. The dash represents a lifetime of significant times and seasons, events and celebrations, struggles and decisions.
Within the dash is a certain rhythm of life, marked off by special days and seasons. The holiday weekends of Memorial Day and Labor Day, for instance, mark off that very special time of year that we call summer. I think people look at summer as a kind of a magical time, when we can do things we can’t do the rest of the year: kick back, relax, enjoy the sun, spend more quality time with the family, work less/play more. Though, as you well know, it doesn’t always turn out that way. Perhaps Labor Day weekend is a good time to re-evaluate our expectations.
So, today we turn to the writer of Ecclesiastes for a bit of wisdom about the times of our life and work and how that all comes together in the context of our life with God. In Hebrew, the writer calls himself Koheleth, which means “the preacher.” Koheleth is often seen as quite pessimistic about life. He’s seen the good, the bad and the ugly, and he doesn’t see a great deal of hope that things will change for the better. Still, he has some helpful insight for anyone who wants to experience life as it is meant to be experienced, that is under the sovereign grace of God.
It’s interesting that we honor American workers by not working, isn’t it?
Of course, some people make not
working a sort of an occupation. Getting
by with as little work as possible. There
was a company that decided to clamp down on its delinquent employees.
They hired a new CEO who in turn instituted some tough new policies.
Employees would come to work and WORK.
The new motto of the place was, “Getting done is job one.”
The new boss was totally focused and was a force to be reckoned with.
There would be zero tolerance for sloughing off.
The new boss looked eagerly for an opportunity to give the workers an
object lesson, and he soon got his chance.
He was walking through the building one day and saw two men leaning
against a copy machine laughing and telling jokes.
Even when they saw the CEO they just ignored him and continued to have a
good old time.
The boss was furious, but calm as he approached the two men.
He asked them how much salary they received in a two-week pay period.
They answered that they each got about fifteen hundred dollars. The CEO reached into his wallet and counted out $3,000,
giving each man half. “I’m
giving you the equivalent of your two weeks’ notice right now,” he said,
“and I am ordering you off the premises.
I never want to see you again. You’re
both fired! NOW GET OUT!”
The
two men didn’t seem upset at all. They
just shrugged, took their money, and walked out.
The CEO told another employee to tell personnel and security that these
two men were not ever to return. He
then stopped and asked, “By the way, what were those guys supposed to be
doing?” The employee said,
“Those two guys work for the office supply company downtown.
They were just delivering the new copier.” (story file, 19.11.7)
Oh,
well, at least he made his point, didn’t he?
If you’re going to work for me, you’re going to work!
The
problem, of course, is that work is, well. . .work!
It can be such drudgery, and for what?
A study done by MIT PRESS showed that as many as 95% of people who are
employed are unhappy in their jobs. I
go to work everyday, I sweat and struggle and produce, and for what?
Or as Koheleth says, “What gain have the workers from their toil?”
The
writer of Ecclesiastes is an observer of life, an observer of people, and one of
the things he has observed is that many people are miserable in their work.
When he asks this question, “What gain have the workers from their
toil?” he is asking it from the
perspective of the person who is interested in making a buck.
The profit motive. And, of course, that is one way to look at our work.
It brings home the bacon. Or
it pays the mortgage, or it helps us take that well-deserved vacation.
But the point that the preacher wants to drive home here is, that if the
only reason you work is for the profit or the gain, then you will find it to be
a “miserable business.” You may
make a lot of money, but you won’t be happy.
Most people don’t believe that, though.
They believe they could be
happy if they just made a little more
money!
Still, many people have an inkling, deep down in their soul that it’s just not right. Something isn’t clicking when all I do is bring home a paycheck. So, what they try to do is to find a sense of purpose in their work. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? You will be much better off if you discover a sense of purpose and meaning in your work. A reason to get up in the morning is probably worth more than a few extra bucks at the end of the month.
I
recently read brief stories about three people who found a sense of purpose in
their lives. One was Connie Reeves,
who died about a week ago at the age of 101.
At the time of her death she was America’s oldest cowgirl.
And she died 12 days after being thrown by her favorite horse.
In 1997 she had been inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.
Riding horses is what gave her life purpose and direction.
“As long as I’m alive,” she said,
“I’m going to be trying to ride a horse.” And that’s what she did.
The
second person I read about was Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in
space, who is a now professor of physics at the University of California at San
Diego. She is one of the people who
served on the presidential commissions to investigate the Challenger and
Columbia Space Shuttle disasters. Her
passion is to pass on her love of science to young girls.
She says that she wants girls to learn that “science is really cool.”
Then
I read about a young girl who has already charted out her life’s purpose. Here it is, in her own words: “I have come to a realization—my purpose on this Earth.
Some were put here to create, others to destroy—and some, it seems, for
no purpose at all. I was put here to consume.
That is right; I was put on this Earth for the purpose of becoming, and
being, the consummate consumer. My
purpose here is to shop. You may
think this shallow and and/or ridiculous and/or pathetic. I do not care, so true is my purpose, and so firm is my
belief in this purpose. I was put
here to do a job, and so do it I must.” (story
file18.11.5)
So,
here we are, back where we started. Profit,
and consumption. So maybe it’s
not enough to say that life needs to have a purpose.
At least not just any old purpose. A
sense of purpose, in and of itself, will not make life meaningful and
satisfying. There’s still
something missing. And
that’s the God connection.
The
founder of a chain of restaurants called Chick-fil-A was interviewed recently.
He was asked to describe his corporate purpose.
You’re familiar with corporate mission statements, I presume?
A car manufacturer might list its mission as “producing economical yet
sporty vehicles that will appeal to Generation X.”
In a similar way, you might expect the mission statement of a restaurant
chain to say something about food. But
here is the corporate purpose of Chick-Fil-A, according to its founder:
“To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to
our care.” Fascinating.
His purpose has nothing to do with chicken.
Or with profit. And he has
over a thousand restaurants with a sales over 1.24 billion dollars.
But
the purpose statement of Chick-fil-A is right in line with the thinking of the
preacher Koheleth. Here’s what
the preacher of Ecclesiastes says (my paraphrase):
Give up on profit. Re-orient
your life toward God so that your life will have true purpose.
Let’s
take a look at how Koheleth has framed this passage (again, my paraphrase).
There’s a time for everything, he says.
God makes everything beautiful in its time.
People have a sense of guilt about the past and they worry about the
future, while at the same time they try to figure out what makes God tick, but
we can’t quite do it. We try to tame time and the seasons, the days and
months, with our palm pilots and calendars.
But God is the author of both time and space.
To use a 75-cent theological word, God is sovereign.
God’s in charge. We struggle to understand, to succeed, to profit, with
limited success. What God does lasts forever—you can’t add to it or take away from it.
All you can do is fall on your knees and worship.
Stand in awe before God.
Here’s the point: We work, we sweat, we struggle, and we wonder whether it is worth the effort. But the only ones who will truly find satisfaction are those who understand that life is a gift, and who reorient their lives so that they will be in harmony with what God is doing. It doesn’t matter whether you job is selling buckets of chicken or riding horses or flying space shuttles. The point is to place your work—as well as the rest of your life-- under the sovereign grace of God.
In
the New Testament, the letter of James says a similar thing:
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today and tomorrow we will go to such and
such a town and spend a year there doing business and making money.’
Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.
What is your life? For you
are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do
this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is
evil.” (4:13-15)
There
are lots of people who on Sunday, act like committed Christians.
But on Monday morning, in the cutthroat world of business, all bets are
off. Watch out!
Here I come. But that is not right. If
you are a follower of Jesus, you follow him at church, at home, at school, at
work, everywhere.
What
really needs to sink in, though, is not the demand
to be under God’s rule. What
needs to sink in is that living in harmony with God’s plan makes life better,
more satisfying, more productive even. “It
is God’s gift,” says Koheleth, “that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” Life’s a gift, and work is a gift too, if you let God
lead you.