IBEC Board member, Dave Kier, writes regularly and this one caught my attention last month. We are grateful not only for successful businesspeople like Dave, but also people like him, who understand the theology of work and are applying it in BAM companies in other continents.
Larry Sharp, Director of Training, IBEC Ventures
larry.sharp@ibecventures.com
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We are heading into another work week that will fly by before we know it. It seems work and time don’t match up. We have more to do than there is time, for us fortunate ones that is. I feel badly for those who physically can’t rise up and go to work be it in a vocation or in their yard or home. Some of my parting words to a few folks at work were to be thankful they can come to work. Why? We were created to work. We were created to take pleasure in our accomplishments. We were created to produce, to provide for ourselves and others. There is dignity in work.
Image a world where people didn’t work. Everyone would raise their own food and find a way to store it. No medicines would be invented and produced. People would be uneducated. The Gospel wouldn’t go forth and on and on would be the devastating effects if mankind didn’t work. Worse, we would be going against how we were created and thus, we would be in conflict. Those ruffians rioting in the streets at night are suffering from severe inner conflict. Solomon said, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his workpiece (Pr 16:27 TLB)”.
The Hebrew word – avodah – is used to mean both work and worship. To worship means to serve. We work to serve others as we glorify the Lord. We produce for our family and for others. This makes for a community. God has given us all differing skills to serve in the community. The Romans and Greeks saw work as torture or that to be done by slaves, but not the dignified. Their empires fell in part due to this corrupt theology. Expecting others to do what we think we are too good to do is corrupt thinking. Paul said in whatever we do, we must do it for the glory of God (I Cor 10:31).
Imagine if God didn’t work. You wouldn’t be here. Enjoying the blessing of work.