The glory of work

My father worketh hitherto, and I work. – Jesus in John 5:17

On the 20th of March 1925 in the Westminster Abbey cathedral, Frederick Lewis Donaldson preached a sermon that has endured the test of time and continues to be poignantly relevant in our day and age when many people tend to toe the line of ease without labor. In the sermon, he identified what he called “The Seven Social Sins” which are: Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle.” One would have thought he lived in our times.

God abhors indolence. Creation loathes it. The Bible does not have a single kind word for the lazy man. Spite is humanity’s reward for the slothful soul. In the words of a Yoruba proverb, if a man tells you that he slept and had a dream where he saw himself coming into abundance of wealth, please warn him to stave off hunger by working very hard to make his dream a reality. Money procured in a dream is only legal tender in the market of deep slumber, not in real life. Between the dream and the reality is work, sometimes gruesome work!

Prosperity without industry is like purchasing real estate in fool’s paradise.

Laziness however, should never be construed to mean the absence of activity. In reality, no man is truly idle. Laziness is nothing but activity in the wrong direction.

The one who should be preoccupied with the contribution he should be making to humanity and how the value of his life can be enhanced, but who daily scrolls to cheap banter and gossip on social media, looking for who to abuse or whose post to attack Is also doing something, even if of no value to himself or anyone else. Yours truly could have graduated from University with a First Class degree. But I was too distracted by other activities that bore little or no relevance to my main course of study. Was I busy? Yes, very busy. In fact, too busy doing things that were of no consequence to my real academic pursuit. With minimum extra effort, I could have made First Class. But I didn’t.

God is called Creator and Maker of all things because He worked. Work is God’s signature tune. The first introduction to Him in scriptures is in relation to His work

There are three dimensions to work. First is work as vocation, a calling, translated from the Latin root, “vocare”, from where we get “voice”, “call”, “calling, vocal”. Yes, your work is not just what you are given to bring value to creation, it is your VOICE in and to creation. Last week, we looked at the subject if “IT”. Your work is both a calling and your imprint on creation. It is your opportunity to partner with God to make a difference in creation by enhancing its value. As we saw last week, it is also your platform of contribution. When you see your work as a calling, your stamp on time, as well as your unique opportunity to solve a unique problem for humanity, you will never have to chase or beg for money. It will find you. Money is nothing but a reward that is perpetually looking for those who consistently solve problems without caring about getting paid at first.

Packaged inside your vocation are your vacations. You stop working when you find and embrace your calling. Let me explain. When you are doing what you are wired to do, you apply yourself so effortlessly to it that it hardly feels like work. Every day actually feels like a holiday. You can be sacked from a job. But nobody can sack you from your calling. When you see your work as a calling, even if you lose a job, you can always create one to do on the platform of your calling.

Furthermore, there is work as industry, where application of effort produces the outcomes inherent in the vocation. As the Bible says in Proverbs 10:4, lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Industry is the best expression of inspiration. Hard work is the canvass on which inspiration finds physical expression. It is where creative genius meets with productive labour.

No vocation, no matter how inspired, is of value until it is backed by industry. A divine dream inspired creation, but God worked to make it happen. The biblical account of creation shows us that God was at work for five full days to put the infrastructure that would sustain the first man in place.

Canaan, also known as the Promised Land may have been described as a territory that flows with milk and honey, but no one draws from the rivers of milk and honey in Canaan with a bucket. In fact, the Promised Land has no rivers named Honey or Milk. To extract the milk in your promised Canaan, you must get ready to raise cows, dung and all. You fetch the honey by keeping bees, sting and all.

Divine favour only comes upon diligent labour. No one recommends you in public for what they have not seen you do in private. Excellence in the public space is a product of industry that began from the private place of preparation. Champions are not made in the ring. They are tested and proven there. I once saw a football coach making his players run round the tracks of a stadium. Initially I was tempted to ask what racetrack running had to do with soccer. Then it dawned on me that he was not training them to be track champions but developing in them the stamina required for a 90-minute dalliance with the round leather ball during a match.

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The sluggard is full of dreams, grandiose imaginations and grandiloquent utterances about castles he will build in the air of his la la land. In the field of play, however, his life is riddled with excuses and the only game he beats everyone at is the blame game. Excusitis is the perpetual disease of the slothful. Beyond the trap of excuses and the blame game is the lazy person’s penchant believing that the universe or anyone owes them everything. Even if they show no interest in working, they believe that government, family and friends all owe them a living. I have heard people say that the only reason why God has financially blessed a family member is so that he can finance the entire lives of the other members of the family. Entitlement makes the slothful think the world owes them the duty of pandering to their tantrums

In their warped idyllic universe, the entitled believe that their family owes them a living. Government owes them food. If a lady, then her husband owes her an upkeep for life. If he cannot pay all the bills, then there is no marriage. The entitled male who gets married, believes that his wife owes him submission even when he misconstrues the submission to mean subservience… Continued.

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!