Can't Get Out of Work and Why Would You?

We live in a world that is obsessed with the search for comfort and ease.  Consequently, laziness and sloth are at endemic levels as no longer, as it has been in the past, do people reward their hard work with relaxation.  Instead, serenity is considered a sort of birthright, an entitled dispensation.  It is as if work has been deemed evil as laziness has been exalted as good.  

Scripture, however, has another way of dealing with work altogether.  For Scripture, particularly for Solomon, work is not just the drudge of daily life but it is one of the true joys of life (Ecc 5:12, 18).  The reason that work is a joy has far less to do with the what of work than with the why.  The why of work is that God has given us the joy of using our senses and exercising our dignity in the reception of the goods that come from work, i.e. wage, satisfaction, et al.

This is not to say that work and the provision that work affords should ever be allowed to eclipse God either in exaltation or in faith.  Instead, work is to be rightly considered as a component of the grace that God has given to humanity.  Our work is but a medium for God's grace to be conveyed to us.  Let us then take great joy in work and to always give God praise for that joy!