Three years ago, Kay and I planted (with the help of many friends) rows and rows of tiny lavender ‘plugs’ in hopes of one day seeing a harvest. This hobby on the sidelines of our lives has at times hijacked us and become our life. It has been hard work. But the work of planting, weeding, fertilizing (non-chemically, of course), and watering paid off this summer with an acre of eye-pleasing, luscious-smelling lavender blooms. And once blooms appear comes the equally hard work of harvesting!
I suspect our friends and family are secretly asking (and some not so secretly), Why are you doing this? Are you out of your minds? Don’t you have better things to do with your time?
Besides being something we do together, a task that gets us outdoors, and a productive use of our land, the lavender gives us the opportunity to do good work. Or maybe I should say, the growing and harvesting of lavender forces us to do good work.
You may be asking – What is so good about work?
One of our modern conception of life is that work is bad, and we should do whatever we can to get out of it – especially certain kinds of work. The subject of work is a huge ‘can of worms’ that cannot be explored adequately in a short post, but let me say a few words in favor of all work having the potential of being good.
- There is the notion that if I am smart enough and upwardly mobile enough I should be able to opt out of certain kinds of work. If I am really honest, I look down on those who work outdoors, do manual labor, and actually sweat. I consider myself ‘fortunate’ if my job or vocation does not require that kind of work, because I believe that kind of work is inherently bad or inferior.
- While every job requires work of some sort – mental effort, creation of ideas, paper work – we grade or classify some work as good or noble and other kinds as bad or not as worthy. Thus, in a rather arbitrary manner, we have determined that the work of an accountant, writer, and nurse are worth more than that of a construction worker, farmer, or trash collector.
- This is particularly true for those of us who are in religious professions. We tend to view our work as being of a higher order and thus above every other kind of work. Our work is divine (or at least highly beneficial) and most other kinds of work are just a necessary evil or an unfortunate consequence of the fall of humanity.
What keeps us from affirming work of all kinds as being good? I remember a missionary colleague describing a person who had left mission service and had gone to work on a pig farm. The colleague lamented that this person had lost his calling and was reduced to ‘just’ taking care of pigs. But could it be that pig farming is a calling, even a divine calling? Couldn’t pig farming be good, honorable and productive work? The assumption of my colleague was that what the former missionary was doing could be neither good nor divine.
If all of creation – the land, animals, plants – is good (Gen. 1) and if the cultivating and keeping of it (2:15) is our principal vocation, then how can we say that the work we do related to the created order is worthless or bad. Our role in creation is to steward all that comes into our hands. This is the good work for which we were created and to which we are called.
Lavender is not my profession, but it is good work that I am allowed to do. Spending a day in the field with plants and soil acutely reminds me that the labor of my hands, the bending of my back, and the sweat of my brow are good and worthy – even divine – work.
Questions I am asking myself …
- Why is it that I label some work as bad or inferior?
- Why have I made play, entertainment, and vacation the highest aims of life?
- What changes should I make in my theology and view of life so that I am able to affirm all work as potentially good or even divine?
- In what ways should ministry and missions take place within the context of good work?
As we more fully embrace BAM and find our business taking off, I’ve been thinking about this question of work. It feels right and good to work in the community just like the people we want to reach. It can also be exhausting and make us wonder if we’re spending our time well, since not every moment is spent in traditional missionary activity. It seems more honest in a lot of ways. We are just people who want to follow God, who have been called to do so in a dark place. There are plenty of people–including missionary kids–who don’t know that missionaries actually work because our schedules can be odd and the fruit of our labors somewhat intangible. But as business people, no one questions our role in society or our commitment and need to work. I kind of wonder if this is how we should have been doing things all along. It’s tiring and stressful, but it also feels right at the end of the day.
Great piece and beautiful picture. I’ve been cleaning out a very junkie closet this morning and not liking it one bit. Such is a touch a life when our house also is office, campus ministry center, things left behind by kids……etc. I need to keep the goal in sight. Work is very OKAY and God seems to like it!
Bob, Sandie probably likes it as well.
True enough, Mike:-)
Not all work is good. Work is incapable of being good when it is corrupted into drudgery. This is often the case when the work is divorced from its proper end, that of producing something good or valuable or useful, and reduced to subservience to some intangible thing which is not directly related. This is usually profit, but can also be a means to something else such as leisure, freedom from work (in the future for the self or the present for someone else), respect, or an ephemeral happiness that is not rooted in anything. This is work that might otherwise be good, but it is held in bondage. In most cases, the worker has no choice. The bulk of the workforce are drones in factories and offices. Some choose work that is drudgery because by doing it they can obtain other benefits which they desire more than what they can gain from meaningful work. This may be a form of insanity. Work as drudgery is nothing new, and has been around since humans first learned that they could dominate other humans, but it has become the norm in our society, and is to be expected when an economy is no longer concerned with producing goods and instead shifts to producing money.