This weekend, we will celebrate Labor Day. For many, this is just a long weekend. For others, especially people who live in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, it is a time of intense labor as they work to make this a place of rest and recreation for the people who come here.
I would like to encourage you to take some time this weekend to think about the workers that contribute to your life and prosperity and to the life and prosperity of your communities.
In our day, people want to be independent. People imagine that they don’t need people and can do everything themselves. The irony is that we are more dependent on more people to do the things we do on a daily basis than we have ever been. Greater technology requires more hands, more minds, and more resources.
Take this computer on which I am typing this article. I could not put it together. The various components come from all over the world and involve the labor of innumerable hands, from those who brought the petroleum for the plastics and the metals for the sensitive electronic parts from the ground to those who assembled the various parts in factories around the nation and around the world, the amount of people involved in this one thing is staggering!
To write this article, I use a program (WordPress) that I did not invent using an extensive network that links me to computers around the world (internet).
To run this computer I need electricity. This electricity is not something I could generate. It comes from the massive planning and projects of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Workers for Sevier County Electric labor night and day to make sure that this electric grid is up and running and that electricity is available whenever I need it.
In light of the astonishing amount of people and labor that is involved in just one aspect of my life, I should be much more grateful than I am! This is a reason to celebrate and reflect on Labor Day.
Of course, the ultimate source of all of this is God Himself. He is a Creator and maker. When we do menial tasks that involve getting dirty, we may wonder if God cares about it. But remember! God made the dirt. He Himself designed this material world in all its intricacies and said that it was very good.
He also created human beings to be workers like Him. When He created them, He blessed them out and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it!” In other words, don’t just take the world as it is! Take it up, re-shape it, re-combine it, and make it more and more serviceable for you, and this will bring me glory! God says.
Christianity is rightly called a religion of grace not of works because God offers a renewed relationship and reconciliation with us as a free gift to be received by faith. No one should boast about their relationship with God because it’s all His gift!
However, part of this gift, is that He restores us to what He intended us to be. We are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph. 2:10).
And what if we can’t do the things we used to do? We are still valued as God’s handiwork. That doesn’t change, and one day God will restore our worn out bodies in the resurrection in the new heavens and new earth where things won’t break down anymore. He still loves us and values us.
God is a worker. He has created workers. He values workers. They contribute to our lives in innumerable ways, and so we should thank God for workers.
This Labor Day, give thanks for all the workers who contribute to your life, and be sure to thank the workers you meet for their continued service to you and to your community.
I really enjoyed this post Pastor Wes.
Oftentimes, I think about the contribution of all types of workers to our society and how all of our lives are interwoven. It is easy to view success or failure as happening inside a vacuum – that is not the case. So many jobs that might seem meaningless to the laborer/employee are important cogs in the machine of life.
Thanks for writing this.
Thanks for your comments. Some think when we get to heaven we will have rest. But even in Eden Adam had a job–to tend to the garden. The curse is not work but a fallen material world that makes our work harder. Nothing is more satisfying than working hard to complete a job of value, to ourselves and others. The hard part is when sin, in fallen persons or the material world works against us: Like bugs in the garden and difficult and angry people.