Remnants of Morning Well Spent

And an excerpt from Buchanan's The Rest of God.

Sabbath Liturgy:

Establishing the Work of Your Hands

My father taught me to work hard, to bend my shoulder to a task until I finished it, regardless of how wearying or tedious it was. He instilled in me a solid work ethic and an attitude equivalent to what the apostle Paul taught the Thessalonians: if you don't work, you won't eat.

But he never said you had to like it, or if he did, I missed that lesson.

After I had been through several jobs -- gas jockey, short-order cook, house painter, grocery boy, baker's helper -- and found some reason, several reasons, to despise them all, I began to wonder if there was a better way.

There was. The apostle Paul, instructing slaves, became my teacher. His best and most enduring lesson was this: whatever you can do with a clean conscience, you can do to the glory of God. No work is so menial that it cannot be rendered as worship. As I began to knead the reality of that truth into the details of my tasks, my attitude changed dramatically. I found joy in toil. My attitude, once toxic, turned tonic. I was not just inspired for the work; I became, for others, inspiring in it.

What if your work became worship? What if the work of your hands -- repairing lawn movers, scoring pots, paving streets, mending bones, balancing ledgers -- was Eucharistic, a sacrament of God's presence that you gave and received? What if Jesus himself was your boss, the One who watched over you and whom you honored with your with your efforts?

Here's a radical idea: next time you're tempted to complain about your work, praise God for it instead. Next time you open your mouth to gossip about people you work with or smear those you work for, stop yourself and turn in the other direction; pray for them, thank God for them, find the good in them. Next time you want to quit, pour that into worship....

...God wants to establish the work of your hands, but he's asking you to lend a hand.