Just Got Paid Today

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.  — Colossians 3:23-24

No matter what we do for a living, or just for living, it is the Lord's work.  Most people we know, maybe even ourselves, need a change in perspective.  Whether a person is CEO or janitor, teacher, union boss, guard or governor, housewife or construction worker, he or she is able to do that job to please the Lord.  A person can be engaged in things that run generally counter to God's will and the rightness of that work has to be considered in a larger context — an assassin, for example.  Surely a hooker might want to look for a more legitimate and honest line of work, and the same for a professional politician — but I repeat myself.

Aside from the immoral, anything we do can be done as for God.  Paul addressed his words initially to slaves in the Roman Empire who might be assigned demeaning tasks by cruel masters.  It did not matter.  The Christian can turn an unjust demand into an opportunity to serve the Lord. 

Most of us these days are not faced with deep moral dilemmas on the job.  Our questions run more along the lines of whether or not our work is meaningful and significant.  Are doctors or EMTs or police officers more important than restaurant servers or factory workers?  Should we value teachers above farmers or truckdrivers?  In purely economic terms, supply and demand may should determine monetary compensation.  But how much we are paid has nothing to do with whether or not our work is significant.  A mother who stays home and raises her children is unquestionably worth more than the quarterback of a professional football team.  Only a handful of individuals can achieve on the football field, and because there are thousands willing to surrender large amounts of money to watch those activities, the players are well-paid.  With enough love and a little help from the Lord, anyone can become a reasonably good parent, despite the immense difficulty of it.  Good parents may be known only to their children, and their reward in monetary terms may be non-existent, but they are great in the kingdom of heaven. 

Right now close to a fifth of the working population have no job at all or they have taken work that is "beneath" them.  Some will say they will do whatever they have to do to take care of their families.  Whatever their belief system, such people are not far from the kingdom.  God is not asking us to always love what we do, necessarily; He asks us to love why we do it, to change the focus of our day-to-day work from making a living to living for Him.  It doesn't matter what the name is on the hat or who signs the paycheck; it doesn't matter if we drive a truck or fly a rocket to Mars; we work for the Master.   

Camouflage

Jesus said to her, Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.  – John 20:17

I considered this passage a year or two ago, but I came back to it the last couple of days because it is so poetic and unique in its perspective. 

Mary weeps among the tombs filled with remains, clutching at the straw of the wheat after the reaping.  One approaches with the rising sun behind, his face in shadows.  Perhaps he knows.  She pleads with him.  He tells her who He is by calling her name and warns her not to cling to Him for He must ascend.  He goes to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, the Comforter of the same kind as Jesus Himself who will be with them and in them. 

This is our question:  will we know Him when He comes if we insist on clinging to a single mode of understanding Christ?  When He comes instead in rushing winds and tongues of fire, in a strange, new selfless love, in persecutions that scatter the seeding saints as a dandelion’s fertile cloud, will we know Him?  When He comes to Jerusalem in judgment and destruction, as the besieging armies of the heathen, will we recognize Him?

To those seekers looking into the light, His face will always be in shadow and mystery.  It is not to forms and appearances and surfaces but to the voice, the word, and the truth that we cling.  In darkness and shadow or in blinding light we cannot trust our eyes so we listen.  It is not another’s name He will call but yours, and mine.  Only then are we sure to be undeceived.    

The Lord asks us if we are willing to know Him when we meet Him as brother or sister, mother or child, friend or stranger.  Can we forget the shade of human limitation and sin and hear the voice that calls?  He has kept His promise to never leave nor forsake us, in the storm, in the stones.  He is the stake, the flint and steel and the spark struck.  He is the passing angel who whispers forewarning to our presumptuousness; the one who pours courage like molten metal into our collapsing hope.   He is the Unchanging God of Infinite Guises, rising in circumstances like gale-driven winds of the sea, always calm as the depths.

Paul, standing amid the Athenians on Mars Hill, references the poet Epimenides of Crete, “Yet [God] is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’”.  It is our own ignorance that creates a distance between ourselves and God.  We can find Him everyday, everywhere in everything.  Without light and shadow, color and contrast, the world would be flat and dimensionless in our eyes.  God stands above, but He also permeates the world, and it is His presence in and around us that gives us the ability to discern and perceive, to understand and apprehend.  He gives us our depth of vision.  He causes us to hear the music. 

How we doubt Him in the grind and the pain. 

How we forget Him in the joy and the gain.

In a voice like rain, He calls me: 

 When you drown in My love as the ocean,

When you are devoured by My love as a beast,

 When as a sword My love descends

To unburden you for release,

Will you know Me?