For those of you who are mothers, no, I am not asking about the process of bringing your children into this world. While I love hearing stories about such things, that's not the topic for today. Instead, I want to focus once again on the kind of labor that consists of the work we have to do in this world.
The thing is, I want to argue that we, today, in our North American culture and society, have far too narrowly defined work or, to use my word, labor. We tend to equate it with our work, or our career. In fact, we do this at the expense of other roles that we also "work" at, roles such as being a husband or wife, son or daughter, mother or father, caregiver or provider, brother or sister, and many other such roles.
Over the past several years, I've really had my eyes opened to just how in depth God goes when talking about our labor in these other roles. God has much more to say about how fathers are to treat their children, for example, than in what men should do in their chosen careers. He talks a lot more about how we relate to one another as neighbor far more than He ever mentions anything about our career. And yet, in our skewed view of existence, we tend to place the greater importance on the career, often for the simple (and wrongful) reason that it brings home the money on which we live.
There are all sorts of roads I can go down with that, but suffice it to say, God created us to have labor in this world, but labor far more involved than simply our chosen careers. And God so often seems to take those other labors far more seriously than He does our career. Without disparaging our career, it truly does seem like being a good father carries far greater implications than in being a good manager, marketer, etc.
If we were to ask God, so, tell me about labor, it truly seems like He would point us to things that are so often not spectacular, but are instead foundational. And so it shouldn't surprise us when the chief labors of our lives happen to be those things that we are involved in every single day, always in relation to other people.
The thing is, I want to argue that we, today, in our North American culture and society, have far too narrowly defined work or, to use my word, labor. We tend to equate it with our work, or our career. In fact, we do this at the expense of other roles that we also "work" at, roles such as being a husband or wife, son or daughter, mother or father, caregiver or provider, brother or sister, and many other such roles.
Over the past several years, I've really had my eyes opened to just how in depth God goes when talking about our labor in these other roles. God has much more to say about how fathers are to treat their children, for example, than in what men should do in their chosen careers. He talks a lot more about how we relate to one another as neighbor far more than He ever mentions anything about our career. And yet, in our skewed view of existence, we tend to place the greater importance on the career, often for the simple (and wrongful) reason that it brings home the money on which we live.
There are all sorts of roads I can go down with that, but suffice it to say, God created us to have labor in this world, but labor far more involved than simply our chosen careers. And God so often seems to take those other labors far more seriously than He does our career. Without disparaging our career, it truly does seem like being a good father carries far greater implications than in being a good manager, marketer, etc.
If we were to ask God, so, tell me about labor, it truly seems like He would point us to things that are so often not spectacular, but are instead foundational. And so it shouldn't surprise us when the chief labors of our lives happen to be those things that we are involved in every single day, always in relation to other people.
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