When I was a senior in high school, back in days of old, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for a living. One of my teachers told me, “Find something you really enjoy doing and you will never work a day in your life.” At the time that sounded like an oxymoron to me, but experience soon showed it to be some very good advice. Before I wound up as a pest control trainer for more than 17 years, I had eight different jobs. They may have seemed very different, but all of them had one thing in common – serving and helping other people. That is where I found my labor of love and freedom from work.
God worked for six days to create the entire Universe and everything in it, then He rested on the seventh. He decreed that man should work for six days and rest on the Sabbath; worshipping and praising Him on that day. As men often do, they took a good, simple concept and made it complicated with all kinds of rules and regulations. Jesus was confronted by religious leaders on many occasions about breaking those rules and regulations. After healing the lame man at the pool of Bethesda he told them, “My Father is always working and so am I.” (John 5:17) Another Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in the synagogue and there was a man with a deformed right hand present. Religious leaders were watching closely to see if he would heal him and break the Sabbath rules. Jesus called him to come up front then asked, “Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or destroy it?” After looking each person in the eye for an answer that did not come, he healed the man’s hand. (Luke 6:6-11) On yet another Sabbath, Jesus was walking through a grain field when his disciples began picking the grain off the plants to eat. The religious leaders pointed out to Jesus that they were breaking Sabbath rules by harvesting grain on that day. He responded, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)
As a boy, I remember my mother, and later my stepmother, putting together a delicious Sunday dinner after church. It sure looked like hard work to me, but as they put the food on the table with a smile and enjoyed it with my father and me, it was obvious that it was a labor of love.
As Christians, we must follow Christ’s example and always be about our Father’s business. His business is never hard work, but always a labor of love.