Work 3 (God's work in my life)

In Exodus, God lays it down in these adamant words regarding Sabbath observance. “Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death; whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people. For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death… It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested.” (Ex. 31:14-17; Ex 35:2 has a similar admonition).

Without the clause, “sign between me and the Israelites forever,” the modern reader would probably enter a panic. 99.99% of the people on the planet are not observing the Sabbath. America has a large number of stores open every day of the week and some are even 24/7!

Why was God so serious? I’m not sure. Resting is an essential aspect of being human. Without proper sleep, people do not function properly. People typically work a quarter to a third of the time in a week (168 hours), typically spending at least as much time in bed sleeping. There is something profound about recreation and play and the absence of work that enables us to return to work reinvigorated. I find it interesting that the modern calendar uses a 7-day week with no work on Saturday or Sunday. Is the concept of a 7-day week universal to all cultures? I sort of doubt it, but I’ve never looked into it.

Anyways, as disciples, we are called to follow God’s example, and Ex 31:17 explains that God rested and so should we. Here are some additional scriptures about some of God’s work for us to consider. “The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets” (Ex 32:16). One of God’s special works was the writing on the tablets of stone. I wonder what they looked like! Did God use his “fingers” or did he just zap the writing on all at once?

“Then the LORD said: ‘I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you’” (Ex 34:10). God’s works are wonderful (see Psalms). God works at all sorts of scales. He created the differentiation and tiny variation in the big bang that resulted in the conglomeration of stars and galaxies just as he wanted. If there had been complete uniformity, the universe would have just been a big homogenous soup and we wouldn’t be here! God operates at a global level, fashioning the earth over the course of five billion years, culminating in homo sapiens who was capable of worshipping and loving their creator.

God operates among the nations. It is powerful for me to reflect on the following facts:

• Hitler’s oppressive 3rd Reich lasted little more than a decade.
• Saddam Hussein was brought to justice within two or three decades.
• Even the Cold War with the Soviet Union lasted less than a half-century.
  

God cares about and works in the lives of individuals. The number of things that had to happen for me to become a disciples is rather astounding. The times and places orchestrated is really quite amazing. In 1998-99 I underwent counseling at SPU since I felt I needed help processing some issues in my life. This ended up helping me create the room to make independent decisions in my life. In spring 1999, Shannon Jackson (a friend from high school 1990-92) visited her friend Allison Tait in Seattle. Shannon and I had not seen each other for years, so we got in touch and she took me to airport to visit my sister in Tennessee. On the trip over, she mentioned she was staying with Allison, who also attended Walla Walla College with Shannon and myself. WWC is a small school (1500 people) but I’d never met Allison; I just knew she was on the softball team. At the time, I was a young adult leader at Green Lake Church and I was trying to network with all the Seventh-Day Adventist young adults in Seattle. Thus, when I got back from Tennessee, I gave Allison a phone call, told her about the “Connections” group I was forming, and asked if she wanted to be on the email list. She said, “sure” and we chatted a bit. Unbeknownst to me, she had just finished the sin study that night with Lisa La De Route Lewis.

In June or July, I was talked to my friend Len Kandt who was on the periphery of the SDA young adult group and I was hoping to get him more involved. He was getting his master’s in mechanical engineering at UW and we had a class together. He said he had hung out with Allison and that she was going to a new church and had some strange new beliefs. My ears perked up because SDA’s hardly ever leave to go to a different church. They just stop going.

In summer 1999, I got depressed despite the beautiful Seattle weather. The curtains went across my eyes and I could not get anything out of the Bible and felt very disconnected with God. The key components in my disconnection with God were my sin (obviously) but also the church politics I had experienced and a lack of true Biblical spiritual & soulful fellowship. Simultaneously, I was not finding complete satisfaction my grad school experience and wondered about the purpose for my life and whether I should pursue my Ph.D.

(to be continued :-)

Work part 2

Continuing with the scriptural exploration of work...

• Ex 12:16. This is the first occurrence of a vacation day, festival, or rest day since the 7th day of Creation. The Sabbath is a major theme of the Pentateuch.
• Ex 15:11. "Who is like you— majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?" All of us are given tasks and work to do. We work the soil, work the client base, work the audience--but only God works wonders!
• Ex. 18:18. Jethro visits Moses and quickly realizes that Moses is burning himself out. "What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?" Moses answered him, "Because the people come to me to seek God's will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God's decrees and laws." Moses' father-in-law replied, "What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone."
  
  I find this to be a profound scripture. I see a lot of my life wrapped up in Moses right here. I find it natural to be wanted, to be important, to accomplish things and have a purpose in life. What better purpose than to help people? And yet this role can be completely consuming. There will always be more needs! The world is full of needs and they can't possibly all get met by a single person.
  
  For me, this is where faith in God can rescue me. God created the church, the body of Christ to function as a unit (1 Cor 12). The whole is much much greater than the sum of the disparate body parts. When our efforts are coordinated and unified, God can use a few people to accomplish anything! (Gen 11:6)
  
  This is why it's important to be part of organizations where teamwork is emphasized, valued, and built. Microsoft rewards me for being an "individual contributor," but without a strong team, my contributions won't have the impact they otherwise could because I'd spend all my time building infrastructure rather than focusing on my area of specialty.
  
  God used Jethro to help Moses see his need to build an excellent team to share the mental, physical, and spiritual burden. As I've been raising kids the last three years, the need for teamwork with my wife has become abundantly clear. Without teaming up, we will not succeed. I'm really not sure how single parents do it!
  
• Ex. 20:9-11. "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
  
  "Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day."
  
  These are the two Sabbath commands in the Bible. Same command, but different reasons for obedience. The Exodus scripture encourages the people to imitate God. The Deuteronomy text tells the Israelites that Sabbath is a weekly reminder of God's deliverance from Egypt (the core event in their faith) so that they remain spiritually focused on their need for God. This is not unlike our Communion where we remember Jesus' crucifixion, the core event of our faith and through it our powerful deliverance from sin. We need this weekly reminder!
  
• I grew up keeping the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday just as the Jews were instructed (the Jewish tradition is that the day begins at sundown rather than sunrise). However, in my Seventh-Day Adventist subculture, the details of Sabbath-keeping were left as an exercise to the reader. The core command was "thou shalt not do any work" at which we were fairly successful. The outcome of this way of life, however, was that my family worked very hard six days a week. In college, I did homework right up until sundown Friday, and then started back into it on Saturday night after sundown. There was certainly a benefit from taking a 24 hour break, but I did notice the effect of compressing the rest of the week.
  
  When I attended church at Green Lake in 1997-99, my church and leadership responsibilities grew to the point that Sabbath was not very restful. When I became a disciple and no longer had any responsibilities at that church, I had some very extended QT's on Saturdays while I still kept Sabbath.
  
  Correct Sabbath behavior is certainly a moving target in the Seventh-Day Adventist religion. My family was the only one at church who did not know who won the Blazer playoff game the night before. SDA's do not attempt to interpret the scripture literally as do the Orthodox Jews, who in my opinion are following the 4th commandment most closely by not causing anyone else to work. We depend on one another in our modern culture that it is nearly impossible to prevent others from working unless you live a self-sufficient lifestyle in the woods or like the Amish.
  
• Ex 26-31, 35-40. The Israelites undertake the task of building a tabernacle for the worship of YHWH. This endeavor brought people's various talents to bear on a spiritual problem. The curtains were the "work of an embroiderer" (26:36). The ephod was the "work of a skilled craftsman" (28:6). The sacred anointing oil was the "work of a perfumer" (30:25). The tunics for the priests was the "work of a weaver" (39:27). Moses inspected it and "finished the work" (40:33).
  
  

Work, work, work, work

This QT is inspired by the challenges I've been feeling in my work/life balance. Working at Microsoft is stimulating and exciting, too much so perhaps. I believe Scott Green has had similar challenges. I recall him quoting the 7 dwarves, which also rings true for me: "we dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig ..."

Work themes in the Bible

• Gen 2:2-3. God worked, created the world, and then he took the 7th day off. According to Heb 4:3-4, the 7th day turned out to be longest vacation of all time (i.e., it's still happening :-).
• Gen 2:5,15; 3:23; 4:2,12. God intended for people to work the ground. There is a intimate relationship between people and the earth. The earth does what it does and produces what it produces, but people have the opportunity to shape and accelerate the growth. In some sense, people participate in God's ongoing creative work. Time-lapse photography like this view of our groups new building http://oxblue.com/pro/open/?webPath=microsoft/westcampus give some idea of what coordinated efforts can do (let's hope it has not been built in the spirit of the tower of Babel (Gen 11).
  
• Gen 29-31. Jacob works 20 years: 7 for Leah, 7 for Rachel, and 6 for some flocks/herds. The time passed quickly because of his love for Rachel (Gen 29:20), yet he ended up with Leah at first. The concept of needing to work and prove yourself before your father-in-law will give you his daughter is a very interesting one. With two girls now and one on the way, I don't think it's such a bad idea!
  
  The thing about work is that it makes you feel like you earned it. Jacob effectively stole Laban's flocks by some special knowledge of genetics and animal behavior (Gen 30:37-43). It didn't keep him up at night, though. He felt very justified (Gen 31:38-42) in all he had done to Laban.
  
  Somewhere along the way, Jacob's attitude changes from "I earned this" to gratitude. He prayed to God in Gen 32:9-12, "I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau..."
  
• Ex. 1:13-14, 5:4-18. The Egyptians enslaved the Israelites and made them work. When Moses asked Pharaoh to let the people go, Pharaoh just made it harder. To me, this is an example of purposeless work where there is little satisfaction in what one accomplishes. I wonder how the people ate food if they were enslaved? Perhaps the Israelite women had to watch the kids and grow the food, and the men were the ones constructing the pyramids, buildings, etc.
  
  Interestingly, Pharaoh increased the work load to take their minds off any ideas of running away. Work can definitely be an opiate. I can get working so hard that I can't see beyond my survival mode mentality. This is how I operated in college (I can do anything for 10 weeks). After finals, there would typically be a big letdown ("now what do I do with myself?"). I also noticed that while working on the service project in Borneo (1995) that even if I read deep books with the intention to learn a lot, my brain simply couldn't process it because my body was working so hard. Books I consumed on that trip included "The Cost of Discipleship" (Bonhoeffer) and "The Consolation of Philosophy" (Boethius), which aren't exactly light reading.
  
  Returning to these scriptures, it is important to note how miserable the people were, and yet somehow their needs were met as they complained later that the desert didn't have the same types of food. "We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic." (Num 11:4-6)