Work for Your Health

Studies confirm that the healthiest people around are those people who enjoy their work.

Today we are disturbed by the high unemployment rate.
Far too many people have lost their jobs.
Being out of work takes its toll on person –
particularly because we so often are identified by what we do instead of who we are –
and when are no longer doing anything, who are we?

After months of being out of work many people give up on being employed again.

And that has psychic consequences that takes a heavy toll on people.

Some of the unreported facts are telling:
Each time the unemployment rate increases by a single percentage point, suicides rise by 4%,
Each time the unemployment rate increases by a single percentage point the number of murders by 5.7%,
Each time the unemployment rate increases by a single percentage point the imprisonment rate increases by 4%,
and each time the unemployment rate increases by a single percentage point deaths from tension-related illnesses increase by 1.9%.

Work seems to be a part of God's plan not only
for our physical survival but also for our mental and emotional well-being.
God created us in His own image.
God is a creating, sustaining, working God.

You see, how we view what we do,
how we view our work,
is ultimately a religious question.
If we view life as meaningful, purposeful,
and having direction, then we will probably view what we do as having rhyme and reason as well.
If, however, life is simply a matter of passing time, getting by,
merely existing,
then it is doubtful that we will get excited by the roles we play in life.

Paul says to the Corinthians in verses 1-3 that he doesn't need a letter of recommendation to them or from them because they themselves are that letter.
Their recollection of Paul's previous ministry there is written on their hearts,
"not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God,
not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts".

Then Paul says that the confidence he has in these "living Corinthian letters" is because God is doing the writing.
Paul doesn't claim that the message of recommendation is composed and written by him but that "our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant... "

We expect God to be present in worship and
we should expect God to be present at when we do what we do – at work or at play.
When God is at work with us,
our breadwinning and bringing home the bacon takes on a sacred dimension.
So it is a sacred thing to drive a truck,
to teach school,
to farm,
to care for the sick and elderly,
to stock shelves,
to make a house into a home,
to do Social Work,
to build houses,
to work in a factory,
and to sell stuff.

And that sacredness makes it different for us workers from the Kingdom of God.

Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. – that’s what Paul wrote.
Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you.
Everyone you encounter reads the your letter – when they do, what are they going to read?
Paul goes on:
You are a letter of Christ, . . . written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on tablets of human hearts.