Work

“I have an iron will and all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I push past one spell of it and then discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and think that I’m mediocre and uninteresting again and again. My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre and that’s always pushing me. Because even though I’ve become somebody I still have to prove that I am somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.”-Madonna

The question of “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” has come up a lot recently. Not only in my life but in other’s I’ve talked to as well. This is typically a question that one deals with when applying for colleges or choosing a major, not when one has already graduated from a university with a four year degree. I was talking with a good friend of mine a couple weeks ago about trying to find work. She can’t seem to get a job that she really wants and went to school for but the thought of getting a job for the sake of having a job sounds miserable. We all want to do something that we love and are passionate about, something in which we can find meaning and value, but what is the gain?

I listened to a sermon online from the church I went to in Portland and they are continuing to deconstruct the ideas in the book of Ecclesiastes. The topic last week was about work. Humans are meant to work, it’s what we were created to do but sometimes it’s hevel. We work so we can leave our mark on the world and try to make a difference. We work to gain significance and value, to gain an identity and purpose in life, but it’s all hevel, a chasing after the wind. Work makes us stressed out, it amounts to nothing once we are dead, and we will never find our true identity in it because striving to find ourselves in our work is rooted in our insecurity. So what is the gain in working, in dedicating our lives to something that is here today and gone tomorrow?

“The fool folds his hands and ruins himself. Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 4:5-6). I learned in this sermon that to fold your hands in Hebrew is the word “yad” which refers to the area from your fingertips to your elbow. To fold your “yad” means to take a nap or more figuratively, to give up. It is foolish to give up and stop working because in order to do so you must give up your humanity. Humans are made to work. In Genesis when the first humans were created, God put them to work by having them name and rule over the animals and look after the land. We were all created to work and it would be foolish if we did not. However, the opposite extreme to not working is working too much. This is the idea of having “two handfuls with toil.” The Hebrew word for this is “khoven” which creates an image of someone grabbing hold of something with tightly clenched fists. This is when we try to find our significance, meaning, and purpose in life through our work. This type of living often breeds workaholics, those who spend countless hours and sleepless nights working for something that is hevel. What is best, and what brings redemption to this rather depressing topic is the Hebrew word “kaf” which refers to having “one handful with tranquility.” This is the idea of restful work. You may be laughing to yourself at the thought of this paradox because work is work, it’s not restful, but “kaf” is the image of having one hand working while the other is up with an open palm. You see, you cannot find your identity in work. Identity has to be something that is given not created. And when we try to create it in our work, we will work our whole lives for something that will be gone the day we breathe our last.

So again I ask, what is the gain in working? None! There is no gain if what you are trying to do in your work is find significance and meaning. I work in the housekeeping department; there are no glory and riches in that job. I work very hard to clean bathrooms and linens that in a day will become dirty again. My job never ends and when I leave this camp, all the work I did to make that department better will be left in the hands of someone in which there is no guarantee that they will continue to hold housekeeping to the standards that were put in place when I worked there. If this is all that I am living and working for then my life is hevel! But this is where the good news of Jesus Christ comes in because without him and the cross the brokenness and self-centeredness of our lives will consume us and leave us desperately grasping for any form of false meaning and identity we can reach. Without Jesus our life has no meaning. Without Jesus we have no identity. And without Jesus our work is hevel, a chasing after the wind. It is only when we root our self in the person of Christ that we receive our identity as a child of God. In Christ we find rest for our souls and meaning for our life. In Christ the paradox of restful work becomes reality. It is only in Christ that I can clean toilets forty hours a week and say that my work is not in vain, that I am a child of the living God and am working for the greater purpose of bringing his kingdom to earth. Without Christ’s redemptive work on the cross I’m just cleaning toilets for the sake of one day they will become dirty and I will have to clean them again. No, my identity, significance, meaning, and purpose rests in Jesus who was nailed to a Roman cross, died a murder’s death, and in doing so took all of my shame and brokenness and self-centeredness down with him in the grave and rose again giving me new life, true identity, and perfect purpose. This is kaf, restful work. And this is life in freedom. E.