On The Office there is a character named Angela – it’s apparent she’s a Christian. It’s not apparent through her sharing her faith or attending church, rather it’s because she’s so judgemental about certain things, the producers have drawn a caricature of a real phenomenon where many Christians don’t know how to reconcile work and their beliefs.
At its worst, this confusion can come out as prejudice, anger or manipulation. Or it can be inappropriate and insensitive attempts to convert everyone they work with.
Instead, sometimes Christians will withdraw. They can either quit working in their industry, feeling the only way to be true to their faith is to work at a Christian ministry. Or they might find a company where all their co-workers are Christian. Or, Christians might compartmentalize their lives and give up their beliefs Monday-Friday, and only live out their faith on Sundays.
Neither extreme is good. In one Christians withdraw from the world that God created. In the other, they see their contribution only as moral police and evangelists.
What if God is calling us to do good work in his world? What if God is calling us to be serving others and creating – not just in Christian ministries, but in industry, education, art, media, business, civil service and more?
How could you tell the difference between a Christian doing God’s work, then, and anyone else? What difference does being a Christian make? Clue in this short little bit of a Psalm, a kind of musical poetry in the Bible:
Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Psalm 127:1-1 ESV
We come back to foundations…something we looked at in last series. The image is of two subcontractors – say two carpenters, perhaps even working for the same general contractor. Or the second image: two soldiers guarding a base. They could both be in the same country, same regiment, same platoon. The difference is one works for God, and the other works for something else. You can imagine the possibilities, they could simply work for the company, dad, greed, comfort and security in life, ego, etc.
That kind of work, the Psalm says, is in vain. It’s an exercise in frustration.
When we think the world revolves around us, we can’t stop. Can’t rest. Up early, go go go, late to bed. Not because there’s something to be done, but something to be proven.
But the one who works for God first, and humans and himself second, does work with purpose – it’s not in vain. Most tellingly, it leads to the kind of satisfied rest in knowing you’ve done your part, and the world doesn’t revolve around you. “God gives his beloved sleep.”
We’ll explore tomorrow how work, of various kinds, can be “for God”.
Question: What kind of work have you done that felt like it was “in vain”? How did it feel useless?
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Hi! Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan, you host for the daily challenges. These daily challenges are meant to help people explore what it means to follow Jesus even during our busy commuting lifestyle. If you've never looked into what that means in the first place, I'd really encourage you, check out our Christianity 101 course first. You can take it live in-person or through our mobile app; great introduction to the basic concepts of what it means to follow Jesus that we try to build on in the Daily Challenges.
Every day and week, we follow a rhythm to help us, as one community, learn what it means to follow Jesus even when we're not physically together. Every Monday,we introduce the idea for the week. Every Tuesday, we see what the Bible has to say. Every Wednesday, we allow ourselves to be challenged in our thoughts. Every Thursday, we try to apply it and live it out in our lives. Every Friday, we take time to pray and reflect on the topic. Saturday is a day for rest and then Sunday is a day for community. We're going to start gathering together as one community soon. We just recently had a great baptism service and celebration where a number of our members came together in one place to worship God. We're going to do that more and more often over this year. So, stay tuned for some of our upcoming gatherings.
We're in a series right now called, "Reset." We're looking at how deciding to follow Jesus resets everything in our lives. We've looked at a number of areas that it impacts. This week we're going to look at how following Jesus impacts our views of food and the body. That's why I'm here in a Chinese buffet, a place where people indulge, enjoy a huge selection of food and can have as much as they like.
This kind of a topic about food and the body might surprise you. You might expect Redeem the Commute to be focused more on spiritual things, not having much to do with what we eat and what we do with our bodies, but the two are very closely connected. Tomorrow we're going to see how the Bible says that these two are connected, but it's probably something that you know from experience as well. Think of those times in life when somebody's struck with a serious illness. You almost immediately turn to prayer. We have this sense that spirituality and our physical bodies are both connected.
Just look at people's interest in yoga today. It's amazing to see how people are longing for a way to connect spirituality and physicality in a way that Christianity has maybe neglected. Christianity does connect body and faith in a lot of different ways through things like the Lord's Supper, breaking bread and wine, connecting Jesus' death on the cross with actual bread and wine. There's a physical sign of something amazing that happened a long time ago. Or, baptism where somebody's washed cleaned spiritually, symbolized with water washing them clean on the outside. There's a huge connection between the two. Maybe you can think of some others. That's what I want you to think about today.
Question: I hope you'll join with some other friends from the train or bus, or from the neighborhood, somebody else you can discuss our Daily Challenges with. Discuss with them today's question, "How else do you think the spiritual and physical are connected for Christians?" What examples have you seen?"
Well, have a great discussion. Don't forget, we're reading the Bible in sync as a community. So, check our website or app to see what today's Bible reading is. Have a great one. I'll see you tomorrow.
