We spent the first quarter of the year looking at part 1 of Every Good Endeavor, which focused on God's design for work. If you missed any of those blogs, you can find them all here. We're now going to shift to part 2 of the book, "Our Problems with Work." Fair warning, it's going to be a little more disheartening after talking about the perfect design God had initially created for work. Unfortunately, we live in a broken world, so we don't get to experience perfection like God designed in this world.
While work won't be perfect, it doesn't mean that it can't be fruitful and satisfying. We do however, have to understand how sin distorts work so we can try to salvage some of the satisfaction God planned for our work. Sin creates problems in every area of our life – spiritual, physical, social, cultural, psychological. Things aren't going to work the way God intended them to because we chose sin.
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” -Genesis 3:6-10
We see in Genesis 3, as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, they experienced shame, guilt, and brokenness. Shame, mistrust, and fear of others came about after this. They realized they were naked and made coverings for themselves so others wouldn't see. Again, sin impacts every area of our life. Beyond the negative emotions like shame that Adam and Eve felt after the fall, they were told of the other problems they would now have to face.
Both childbearing and farming are now called "painful labor". This isn't how God designed it to be! Outside of our personal and private life, how are our public and social lives impacted?
In Genesis 1-2 (what we covered in earlier blogs), we see that God designed us for work; however, because of the fall, work becomes "painful toil" (NIV translation). I mentioned it in an earlier blog, but while work itself is not a curse, it now lies under all the other aspects of human life that are under the curse of sin; meaning, it won't work the way God designed it to. Unfortunately, work now sometimes leads to pain, conflict, envy, and fatigue. There might be times where your work won't be fruitful – not all of your goals will be met even with hard work.
This isn't to say you won't have really good seasons where things are satisfying and fruitful. Thankfully we will have those seasons where we have the opportunity to see a glimpse of how God designed work to be. However, there will still be seasons with "thorns and thistles." Work will be hard and it won't always produce fruit (or as much fruit as you would like).
If you aren't seeing fruit in your work or are feeling unsatisfied in your work, does that automatically mean that God isn't calling you into the profession? While there might be some cases where God might be calling you to another profession, just because you are experiencing a season of fruitlessness, does not always mean you should find different work.
We must understand what the Bibles says about creation (God's design for work) and about the fall (the problems of work in a broken world). You might not find the "perfect" career where you don't experience frustration or unsatisfaction in your day-to-day. You should expect to be regularly frustrated in your work, even though you might be in exactly the right vocation. So, while it might be necessary to change careers in order to maximize fruitfulness, we should not only be satisfied in our work if there are no thorns and thistles. Because we live in a broken world, we should expect thorns and thistles.
While a lot of this chapter is about the downsides of work and the challenges we will face, it's not to say it will all be bad. Genesis 3:18 says, "thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field." While work won't be the way God designed it initially, it will still bear fruit. There will be times where work with be both frustrating and fulfilling. We might even get to experience glimpses of the beauty of the way God designed work to be like – the way things will be in the new heavens and new earth. As Christians, we should accept the fact that in this world, work will always fall short; however, we know that our work in this life is not how it will be in eternity.
