Work

One of the joys of our trip home to Canada was the opportunity to walk with, listen to, and share ideas and thoughts with friends and family members. Early in our time in Canada we met with a friend over breakfast in the beauty of her back yard. During the course of our conversation she make a statement. One of the first tasks that God set before mankind was the opportunity to work. However, she was not referring to the “by the sweat of your brow” curse that so many of us can recite. Rather the opportunity to work, our breakfast hostess pointed out, was God offering mankind the opportunity to join with Him in stewarding His creation.

The second chapter of Genesis recounts a summary of creation. Here is recorded the observation that creation included “no man to work the ground”. God’s response to this void was to form man, to create a living being, whom he “put in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” God offered mankind the opportunity to share with him in caring for and enhancing his glorious creation. One writer has offered that mankind was initially placed in the Garden “to be stewards of the garden and function as God’s Vice-regents.”¹ As mankind fulfilled this responsibility, God walked with him in the garden. Somehow work is intrinsic to our well being and dignity as beings, created in the image of God.

In the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930’s President F.D. Roosevelt declared …..

From the F.D.Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C.

Maybe this ethic or world view of work providing us with moral worth and dignity as we join with God in stewardship of His creation, has been a blessing of greater worth than we realize or imagine.

Those countries, Canada included, whose histories include some form of this ethic seem to have thrived and been blessed, despite our tendency to pervert stewardship of God’s creation into exploitation. The same author who referred to our roles as vice-regents offers that the traditional African mindset, or worldview, has yet to transcend the curse of “by the sweat of your brow.” He offers that this mindset that work is a curse², especially for the African male, may be one of the factors at the root of Africa’s seemingly intractable brokenness, hopelessness, and despair.

Awed and overwhelmed with how much we have in Canada, I reflected upon our friend’s words and Lesotho’s stark realities. I was intriqued by the possibilitiy that whether we acknowledge God or not, to the degree that we individually or as societies live out God’s ways, we are blessed, and in Canada, beyond measure.

~Benno~

1 Miller, Darrow L. et al, Hope for Africa, Samaritan Strategy Africa Working Group, 2005. pg. 20

2 Ibid. pg. 41