I just signed up for a Bible in A Year Club online through one of my favorite websites, Every Woman A Theologian. If you are not following them on IG or FB, I highly recommend that page and it’s founder Phylicia Masonheimer. Both have been a great help in how I have been forming my theology.
Today’s reading was Genesis 1-3. We know that part, right? Creation of everything, eating the apple and then The Fall. Because I am trying to do a better job of studying my Bible, I paid closer attention to what I was reading.
First is that God took His time creating (Genesis 1). I imagine that it could have been all done, heaven, earth, sea, land, animals, man, etc. in one instant. But there was a layering of creation. It reminds me that God is ok with processes. Not all things will happen at once. If He tolerated that from his own creation, I could tolerate that as well.
Second, God made Eden to not only feed Adam physically, but for him to have beauty (Genesis 2:8-9). It seems a shame that God made sure His creation held delight and that we don’t take the time to really appreciate the beauty of what He has made. My goal is to be outside more and intentionally dwell on God’s desire that we have beautiful sites to enjoy.
Finally, and what is rolling around in my head the most is the concept of toiling and tending. When God sets Adam in Eden, he is there to “keep” the garden and work the ground (Genesis 2:5, 15) or tend to the garden. However, when Adam and Eve eat the Forbidden Fruit, everyone involved is cursed by God. The snake is cursed with crawling on it’s belly, and other things. The woman is cursed with increased pain in childbirth among other things. Then Adam is cursed with having to toil to make the ground productive.
I really pondered that. God put Adam in the garden initially to tend to it. It was meant to be an enjoyable work since the punishment was for it to be HARD work. The Lord meant for our work to be easy.
To clarify, work is not a curse (sometimes it might feel that way!). To have to hate our work, hate our jobs, to work and sweat to eke out a living is the curse.
Then I think about salvation, Jesus dying on the cross to save us from the curse (Galatians 3:13). How Jesus took on the curses so they would be taken from us. How then, do we accept a life of “grinding it out”? If we are saved, should we also be saved from The Sunday Scaries? Should we also be saved from a hustle mentality that requires quantifying our work in Miseries Per Minute for it to count?
There are so many things we happily accept when we become saved. We are okay with believing that sickness does not have to be part of our everyday lives. We readily accept the concept of blessings showing up. Heaven is a guarantee to us if we become saved.
Why can’t we believe that part of our Salvation is a life and work that we tend and not toil?
I don’t think this means having a different job, a better job, or better pay. Maybe it is how we approach our jobs and lives with the Grace given to us that makes the quality of what we do feel more like a gift of delight and satisfaction. It is the fact that we hate what we do and how we earn our living that is the curse, not the activity itself.
What if the mark of a Christian is in how we approach our work? Whether paid or unpaid? I really believe that part of our salvation is the alleviating of the curse of dreading our work; of the “workness” taken out of our work.
What if we reject toiling and accept tending?
Accept the goodness of tending to the beauty in our lives and that our work can be beautiful.
Accept that enjoyment of work is not in the pay, titles, recognition, or how it aligns with our talents but maybe in that Jesus took on the curse of toiling and obliterated it when he died for us?
And can we accept that gift and not have to toil to do it?