Whatever you do

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Colossians 3:23-24)

Those Christians who work in the helping professions may be tempted to look at those who do creative or constructive work and experience a certain envy. It must feel good to get to the end of the day or the end of your life and have a body of work that you can point to and say "This is what I made", whether it be paintings, books, bridges or furniture. The work of someone who deals with people and their problems can be very rewarding, but the results are more intangible and often ephemeral. And despite the worker's best efforts, often they don't see any result.

The Christian artist or artisan, on the other hand, may envy those in the helping profession because their work seems to be given a higher value than their own by other Christians. This is especially so if what they themselves produce isn't overtly Christian in its message. Many artists, musicians and writers complain that their fellow Christians look with suspicion on anything they produce that is 'secular', or dismiss it as trivial. Those who produce practical goods, whether that's houses, cup cakes or scientific research, may also feel that their work is undervalued compared to that of people who deal more directly with people. 

In the end though, the worth of any work is the value that God places upon it, and his measure of success is how well we collaborate with him. Any work can be done either for his glory or for our own. We have been put in the world as stewards, and our role is to use the gifts he has given us to tend and nurture it in co-operation with him. A broken world needs healers, but it also needs those who sustain it, and others who show us what it could be like. Whatever we do, if we know that the result depends on God both for success and for value, we can work without anxiety and when it's done, rest peacefully.