Labor Day
Scheduled for August 31
(1 Th 4:11-12 NIV) Make it
your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with
your hands, just as we told you, {12} so that your daily life may win the
respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
In
the manner of American politics it has been decreed that a day should be set
aside to honor the common laboring man. When this was first done, most of us
did indeed work with our hands (and not on a keyboard and mouse). On Labor Day
such work is glorified -- but I suspect that if most of us were offered the
life of ease and luxury, we would not turn it down for the honor of being a
laborer.
The
Scripture gives us a different viewpoint. For the most of us, we are to “make
it our ambition” to lead a quiet life. Have you ever heard of leading a quiet
life described as someone’s ambition? Or, for that matter, do you have the
ambition to mind your own business? Let alone the ambition to work with your
own hands! There is wisdom in this. Paul gives us two reasons here: first,
that we may win the respect of outsiders, and that secondly we may not be
dependent on anybody.
Labor,
you see, is not an end in itself. It must have a purpose. Most of us are not
called to be preachers or evangelists; we are called to be just plain “us.”
But our labor may have a divine purpose. If others look at us with respect,
our words about the Lord Jesus Christ may carry that much more weight. Think
of it this way: the man standing on a soap box in the park may be preaching
the truth -- but who’s listening? We’re human; what we listen to often
depends on who is saying it. So our labor, our quiet life and minding our own
business may indeed serve as a testimony to the righteousness which is in Jesus
Christ.
Labor,
then, is subordinate to the cause of Christ. There is a third reason, not
discussed in this passage but frequent elsewhere, for these strange ambitions.
Many of us labor not for the quiet life but for the materials that labor can
bring. We work hard -- not to win respect from others, but to buy the status
symbols our society mandates. What we work for says a great deal about who we
are. Our work shows our priorities in action.
Communion
is a time to reflect on ourselves; that includes our priorities. What are you
working for? Does your life style say, “I’m working to get ahead (of what?);
to keep up (with whom?); to have more (and why?)” Or does it say, “I work to
provide for my family; other than that, my ambition is not for wealth but for
Jesus Christ?” Words are not heard in the presence of action. As you take the
Lord’s Supper this week, ask yourself: “Just who am I working for?”
