Work: Is it More Than Boney Fingers?

TARA GIBBS | CONTRIBUTOR Work, what is it good for? Dolly Parton sings of the drudgery in “9-5.” “Tumble out of bed, and I stumble to the kitchen. Pour myself a cup of ambition, and yawn and stretch and try to come to life. Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin'. Out on the street, the traffic starts jumpin' with folks like me on the job from 9 to 5.” Hoyt Axton expresses it even more succinctly in his 1974 hit Boney Fingers. “Work your fingers to the bone; what do you get? Boney Fingers. Boney Fingers!” Henry Wordsworth Longfellow provides a noble counter-point of view in The Blacksmith, … Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,      Onward through life he goes; Each morning sees some task begin,      Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done,      Has earned a night's repose. Songs about the drudgery of work and boney fingers tell my heart one story about work while Longfellow tells another. This Labor Day I cannot help but wonder, “What story does God tell me about work, and how much are my thoughts about work shaped by His story?” God Works and God Gave Us Work The story God tells about work begins in Genesis 1, and guess who is doing the very first work? God. Is work good? God worked. Not only that, while still in the Bible’s first chapter, we see God crafting image bearers to serve as His working ambassadors. “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth,” (Gen. 1:28). God made birds and fish and animals and plants, and then He made us and charged us to take care of all He had crafted. Genesis 2:15 goes on, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it,” and we see God bringing every creature to the man to be named “and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name,” (Gen. 2:19b). When you and I work as God’s image-bearing ambassadors to His creation, we are doing what He created us to do. Our work is dignifying to us, glorifying to God, and a blessing to this world.  When things got all messed up in Genesis 3, and work became something we had to fight thorns and thistles to do, it did not remove the foundational goodness of work...

Work: Is it More Than Boney Fingers?2023-08-30T14:54:38+00:00

Summertime Discipleship with Your Family

LISA UPDIKE|GUEST “Summertime and the livin’ is easy…” Well, that’s how the song goes anyway. Although I’m not quite sure that summer is all that easy for a mom with kids wanting to go to the pool, have a friend over, visit the park, and build forts in the woods, I do realize that summer is a more flexible time of the year. The long, unscheduled days present opportunities to engage in fun activities, making special memories as a family. That’s what we love about summer, isn’t it? Although my kids are grown, I know that I treasure our picture albums full of smiling, sun kissed faces squinting into the sun next to carefully constructed sand castles. Summertime “easy livin’” also presents us with numerous opportunities to engage our children with the gospel, and that is even more precious than a well-crafted memory album! Memorize Scripture Together Because summer offers a reprieve from the rigors of schoolwork, it is an excellent season to start a Bible verse memory program for your whole family! Choose a verse or passage to learn. Introduce it to the family during dinner, discussing what it means and how it applies to life. As a family, choose an award. Perhaps this could be a trip to the ice-cream parlor, an outing to the lake, or a night by the fire-pit toasting marshmallows for s’mores. Anything can work as long as everyone agrees. Then start memorizing, just a few words at a time, adding to them daily. Have the kids make posters with your family verse, and tape them up on the fridge, in the bathroom, and on your doors. Say it together in the car, in the morning, before bed, or at random times during the day. Once you’ve all learned it, enjoy your reward! You could even make a goal to memorize several passages and have a great big end of summer celebration!...

Summertime Discipleship with Your Family2023-08-15T13:24:03+00:00

How Much More: Marveling at God’s Care for His People

I was privileged to attend a small Christian university. At the beginning of every semester, regardless of the subject, my professors began their new classes with a reminder of God’s creation. My chemistry professor enthusiastically announced we would be amazed at how God had constructed the atom. A calculus professor started his semester telling us that math demonstrated God’s order in the universe. Even the fine arts professors would introduce their topics by reminding us that God knitted each individual together before anyone else even knew they existed. The authors whose works we would read were graciously knitted together with talents for communicating ideas through the written word. Studying under godly professors gave me an appreciation for learning subjects with an eye toward how each fit into God’s creative plan. One of my retirement goals was to get back into college to study subjects that had always fascinated me. Ornithology was on my list. Birds are so diverse and so numerous; scientists are still working on categorizing the eleven thousand known species. The sights and sounds of birds are a beautiful part of God’s order. Birds have been remarkably designed with vision, hearing, touch, and smell senses that surpass that of humans. Some birds can see ultraviolet wavelengths, and some, like eagles, can see four focal points that they watch at once. Certain owls can catch a mouse in total darkness, guided only by their hearing. The sandpipers’ bills are so sensitive that they can detect differences in pressure when they probe mud to sense things before even touching them. Many birds use an acute sense of smell for navigation. Others can sense the magnetic field, read the stars, track the sun, and hear infrasound as part of their navigational skills. Luke calls our attention to birds in chapter 12: “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!” (v. 24). As much as I have been in awe of the birds I have studied, I am reminded in this verse of how much more in awe I should be of those God made in His image...

How Much More: Marveling at God’s Care for His People2023-03-24T18:18:10+00:00
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