Home  Current Events A new definition of "work"
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A new definition of "work" |
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By Chris Raymond
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When does your everyday work become "holy work"?
For anyone who actually enjoys most of their job, calling it “work” seems like a misnomer. Think about it. Other than when you are referring to your job, doesn’t it take on a negative meaning? “It was so much work.” “That’s a lotta work for one person.” "I have too much work." In other words, a burden.
It’s been a loooong time since I thought that my job-work was a negative thing. Since it takes up so much of my life (I throw myself into it), I have always looked for job-work that has been fulfilling, meaningful. And it’s worked for me (hehe).
I read a Bible story the other day that gave me a new insight on what work can be. It’s the story in Luke about Jesus healing a woman who was crippled and twisted and bent over so much she couldn’t even look up. She had been like this for 18 years. Jesus saw her when he was teaching in a meeting-place and right then and there he laid his hands on her and healed her immediately, and she stood straight and tall.
Well, the head honcho of the religious group was furious, and told the whole congregation that Jesus had broken the commandment about keeping the Sabbath day (day 7 of the week) holy. “Six days have been defined as work days. Come on one of the six if you want to be healed, but not on the seventh, the Sabbath.”
Jesus responded, “Gimme a break!!!!” (or words to that effect). “Each one of you on the Sabbath unties your cow or your donkey and leads it to water. Why shouldn’t this woman be “untied” from her physical constraint on this day?”
Wow. I have read this story many, many times in all the years I have studied the Bible. This is the first time I realized that the religious leaders were equating what Jesus was doing as work that must be a burden! But Jesus was defining his “work” as his healing ministry....uhhh, not a burden. I mean, if it is work, it is HOLY work, no?
Jesus even equated the feeding and caring for the animals as holy work. Seems to me this indicates that any effort to care for one another, to love another, isn’t work (bad) at all, it is holy work (good).
Here’s a definition of holy work from the another chapter in Luke:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised…”
So seems to me every day we are helping our fellow man in some aspect of the above job description is our real work…our holy work. And it is blessed.
Read more from this blogger at Practical Spirituality.
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