Laboring in the Fields of God
Christianity teaches that followers of Christ become members of God’s family, a relationship that transforms in turn our relationship to the world—and to the work we do every day.
By R. J. Snell
The world is not as it should be. Christianity unflinchingly teaches this while simultaneously promising good news. Too often, however, good news is presented negatively, as escape from sin, death, and the devil, while forgetting that salvation—salvus—means health, flourishing. Salvation is for something if it’s to be good. Rather than escape, Christianity proclaims adoption into God’s family. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are” for we have “received the spirit of adoption” (1 John 3:1; Romans 8:15).
Legal adoption confers membership, with familial love receiving social recognition. Still, legal adoption, while a profound act of welcome, does not change nature; it grants “as if” status, with the adopted treated “as if” blood relation. (In no way does this diminish the relationship of affection and care.) God, however, can do more, for the God who creates from nothing has the power to alter nature. God does not merely declare us children but makes it so; not only our standing but our very being changes. God’s life, God’s way of being, infuses us and becomes our way of being. That’s the good news, possible because of the Incarnation, when God becomes one of us, with the life of God fully present in and as the person of Jesus. A human is divine, the divine is a human—however unlikely and impossible that seems—and once possible for one, available to all.
As children of God we share in the family’s possessions, with a claim to inherit. What belongs to Jesus belongs to us, and his way of life, his being—holiness, righteousness, and justice—is our way of life, our being. Now “we are the children of God” and “everyone who has this hope in him makes himself holy, just as he also is holy” (1 John 3: 2–3). We sometimes call attempts at holiness the “spiritual life.” For Christians, the life of Jesus is the best “spirituality” since he is our brother and we ask our Father, in the words of the Roman Missal, to “love in us what you loved in your Son.” The life of God is offered to us, and we imitate Jesus, who shows and gives us that life.
More likely we’ll discover tired hands, a stiff back, aching exhaustion, and co-workers.
Certainly, the Gospels recount Jesus doing spiritual things—praying, fasting, reading Scripture, attending services—but for most of his life, and all of it before his three years of so-called “public ministry,” Jesus does the simple, ordinary, and mundane. He works. The people of his own town, after seeing his miracles, ask, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” or, “Is this not the carpenter?” Those who knew him in childhood noted no strange doings or miraculous acts, did not consider him a sage or a prophet, let alone a guru. They knew him as one who lived and worked, as they did. His devotions were unremarkable, entirely usual. Jesus did not spiritualize his life; better, he materialized his spirituality by working.
We spend much of the day at work, either professionally or at home. Mouths to feed, and only by work are they fed… and then the dishes. Whatever our employment, or lack, work remains. We make our beds and breakfast before the nine-to-five, do breakfast dishes in time to dirty them again, help the children with chores and homework, answer emails and fall asleep. The next day is the same, as is the next. On the weekend we tend the garden or mow the lawn, fix the leaking faucet or shop for next week’s groceries. We do this for years. Eventually, someone else does these tasks for us, but work ends only at our end.
How strange if God were not in all this, if God could not be found where we live and move and have our being, avoiding the ordinary, as if sweat and effort were too material, not spiritual enough to manifest his life. Especially strange since, according to Christianity, God created us to tend, fill, keep, and work his garden. However perfect the Garden of Eden, it included work, and the filling of it was a blessing (Genesis 1:28). Work is not a curse, even if work becomes cursed by sin. So, it was entirely proper that Jesus worked, and that we find God as we imitate Christ by working. The office, workshop, field, or kitchen is our altar.
Or it could be. Some work is repetitive, boring, a grind, difficult, wearisome, degrading, or pointless. My wife’s grandfather once responded to a family member complaining about her job by saying, “They call it work because it’s work; if it was fun they would call it play.” He wasn’t entirely wrong. As with any devotion, nothing is automatic. Showing up for an extra shift or staying late to meet a deadline doesn’t guarantee we’ll find God in the loading dock. More likely we’ll discover tired hands, a stiff back, aching exhaustion, and co-workers.
Our work is the means God chooses to complete his plans.
Often, we’re so engaged in the demands of work that it distracts from God; attending to God could interfere with our pressing tasks. No one wants their surgeon to take a break halfway through the incision for prayers. I don’t even want one who audibly prays before beginning, to be honest. Wait, they need God’s help—why? Just be competent as a surgeon, please.
Desk becomes altar when approached by a child of God, one remembering she is about to do God’s work. God made us to tend and fill his garden, by the Incarnation joined our efforts, infused us with his own life, and uses work for our well-being and the common good. As we work, whatever the work, we are doing the family business, since we are God’s children. It’s possible to find God in the middle of work, even to live God’s life as we do so, but only with a certain spirit.
A condition for work becoming devotion is doing it well. We sometimes work out of necessity—those bills and mouths—but we can still offer it as sacrifice, an act of praise and thanksgiving. This is more than mere metaphor. In the ordering of creation as told in Genesis, God first makes structure and then fills in content. Light on day one, the actual lights of sun, moon, and stars on a later day. Waters and sky, then fish and fowl. Dry land, then bramble and beast. Moreover, God doesn’t determine only what will happen but how, and he continues creation through our labor; we are told to continue filling the garden. Our work is the means God chooses to complete his plans. Since creation is his handiwork, and we contribute to his creative act, what we do is an offering and contribution to the temple of God. But we shouldn’t make a shoddy offering, or, as I’m sure my children are tired of hearing, Jesus was a carpenter with edges straight and screws properly fastened. He was about his Father’s business, so did all things well (Mark 7:37). We are about the same business. It’s family, after all.
When we offer our work to God, as well as we can, it becomes our sacrifice.
When we offer our work to God, as well as we can, it becomes our sacrifice. At the very same time, it’s good for us to do, for by it we become orderly, patient, generous, honest, just, capable, and self-governed. That is, our work helps make us well—salvus—as a human being, fully alive and fully attuned to the life of God at work in us. The work becomes sanctified, as do we, and we help make the world well through our efforts, however small the contribution.
The realities of life, as well as our wandering minds, are such that we struggle to work this way. More likely we lose ourselves in busyness or mindlessly give half our attention, if that. We are unusually forgetful. To work as an offering requires constant reminders that we are about our Father’s tasks. We always work in the presence of God, who knows all, but we do not always remember this, so we need a plan to recall his presence. We might begin the day by offering the labors yet to come, including in our offering those expected moments of forgetfulness, just as we can rectify our work and intentions throughout the day with a prayer to recollect ourselves. Such reminders are not the point, and no holiness attaches to them just as such, although they become a path to sanctity. They can be as ordinary and boring as an alarm or a bookmark; anything reminding us we are busy with God’s assignments and work as his children.
So, too, the examen of Ignatius (a reflective daily prayer) recalls the events of the day, including the times of frustration, anger, or forgetfulness. In the parable of the Sower and the seeds (Matthew 13:1–23) we hear of a God unsparing with grace, scattering it carelessly about, lacking nothing and so losing nothing in the giving. Good soil, rocky soil, soil with thorns and thistles, the Sower never hesitates in wanton generosity. A God so giving does not cease speaking, even when we were not listening, but we can listen backwards, if you will, once ready to hear. Recollecting the passed day and its moments, especially the most challenging, isolating, or barren, we discover God was always there, always seeking us, although we were not aware. In recovering the day, we prepare to hear God tomorrow.
God, says the Christian, is a communion of endless outpouring generativity, always giving and eager to give again, whether we know and accept this or not. We live by mercy, children of an infinitely kind Father. This claim is more difficult to believe than to understand but, if true, the source of joy and peace. We are invited into the the life of God, members of God’s family, incorporated—partners—in the work of restoring and perfecting the world, and, finally, heirs of the glory when all things are finally made well.
That’s our practical devotion: the work of the children of God.
Illustrations by Sarah Clark;
from photos by Brett Garwood on Unsplash, Volha Flaxeco on Unsplash, Sandie Clarke on Unsplash, Annie Spratt on Unsplash, & ilya on Unsplash
R. J. Snell, Ph.D., is director of academic programs and editor-in-chief of Public Discourse for the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ. Prior to joining Witherspoon, he was professor of philosophy at Eastern University and a member of the faculty for the Templeton Honors College. He is the author or editor of eight books and hundreds of essays for a variety of scholarly and popular journals. He has been visiting instructor at Princeton University and has lectured at dozens of universities in the United States and Europe. He and his family reside in the Princeton area.
