the spiritual ramifications of The Everyman's job

Your net worth is not your worth.

This was a brilliant line in an equally brilliant sermon this morning on the meaning of work. Usually I tend to just flit over the spiritual ramifications of The Everyman's job because the spiritual nature of our job should be, well, kinda obvious.

Though actually, it's not particularly obvious at the moment. Things are a bit haphazard, not ideally where we would like to be or what we'd prefer to be doing.

Husband is gone a lot, sometimes doing ministry-like things of sharing our work or meeting with supporters or anointing babies (ok, so that only happened once, but it was a fairly significant event for our gypsy souls). Other times he's working booty off in the lawn & garden section, carrying fertilizer or helping an old lady find the right mower for her back. In the meantime, I'm doing all sorts of mom things in mediocre fashion, like making truly terrible alfredo sauce or losing my cool during delayed bedtimes or giving my child an iPod Touch to watch cartoons on when he wakes up before 6 am.

Yep. I'm not feeling like a very good employee these days. My bosses are impatient with me. I slack off on the job. My retirement is not accruing anything, at all, ever. And I keep waiting to be transferred to another department. Same job title, different description. These daily chores don't feel very... important, special... eternal.

So I paid attention this morning. And the pastor said things like this:

"If God kept His Son Jesus in a carpenter's shop for 30 years, that was important work."

or

"God may not need your work, but your neighbour does."

or

"Your work..." (lawyer, burger guy, secretary, mom, church planter) "...is your contribution to the breaking-in of God's Kingdom on earth."

As I walk around in these achey mom shoes, feeling too tight and clumsy and not at all comfortable, I am breaking-in pieces of the Kingdom. Here, on the stained carpet of our living room floor. Gentleness, kindness, patience... sacrifice, generosity, grace... hope, faith, and love.

That's gold right there.

We're cultivating, he and I and you. Even when we don't feel very nimble with our shears and a bit overzealous with our watering cans. While we wait for the transfer, sigh under the weight of daily tasks, heave another bag of fertilizer and praying under our breath for that one person (or two, or three, or 10) we miss over there... there is a grand design to it, greater than we can see.

It is greater than retirement accounts and mortgage refinancing and diversifying investments. Those are all the ramifications, the after-effects. They're not the goal, not the purpose, not the soul of work.

Your net worth is not your worth.

Oh, I'm so glad it isn't mine.

***

So, do you feel like you're breaking-in the Kingdom today? Cuz you are, and I wanna hear about it.