After creating us in his image and likeness, God gave us an assignment – to work and take care of his creation.  “The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work and take care of it. (Genesis 2:15)

Many people look on work as a curse resulting from the fall, but work was ordained before the fall, so work is a part of God’s divine plan for us.  Our purpose is to take care of creation until God is, as St. Paul says, “all in all.” (1 Cor. 15:28)

Lester DeKoster, in his book, Work, the Meaning of Your Life, defines work as “the form in which we make ourselves useful to others and thus to God.”  He explains, “Culture and civilization don’t just happen.  They are made to happen and keep happening by work.”  He poses the question, what would happen if everyone quit working and answers, “Civilized life quickly melts away.  Food vanishes from the store shelves, gas pumps dry up, streets are no longer patrolled, and fires burn themselves out. Communication and transportation services end and utilities go dead. Those who survive at all are soon huddled around campfires, sleeping in tents and clothed in rags.  The difference between barbarism and culture is, simply, work.  As seeds multiply themselves into harvest, so work flowers into civilization.”  

All work that contributes to the production of goods and services for others is part of God’s plan for creation.  What surprises people is that in working at providing the necessities for others they are serving God himself. 

We may be surprised that in doing our work we, too, are serving God.  In working as an attorney for most of my career, I did not consider early on that my work was serving God, but it was indeed a “thread in the larger fabric of civilization” arising out of God’s creation.  My summer jobs in high school and college of serving on a road asphalt crew and a laborer in a cement plant were also “threads” making up the larger fabric of civilization.  

God calls us to love him and one another. (Luke 10:27) He calls us to be holy as he is holy. (1Peter 1:15) He also calls us to work and take care of our thread in the fabric of civilization arising from his creation. 

Do you realize that you are serving God in your work?

Jim, a Christian friend, mentioned to me a few years ago that he was going to Cuba with a Christian group.  He said that he wasn’t sure what he would be doing but realized that over the years the most important thing he could do was just show up.  He said that he found that God’s grace was at work in any given situation or need. Since then, he and his team have gone on ten of these trips, and their efforts have led to over five thousand professions of faith by individual Cubans. More recently, they have been going to Mongolia with the same kind of results. 

His response reminds me a of the passage in the Bible where the prophet, Isaiah is in the temple and hears the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”  Isaiah says, “Here I am. Send me!”  (Isaiah 6:8)

Several years ago, I was asked to help start a local chapter of Christians in Commerce, now called WorkLight (WorkLight | Workplace Ministry Helping Christians at Work.  Its mission is “to encourage and equip Christians to be God’s presence in the workplace by the power of the Holy Spirit, exercising faith, integrity and excellence.” I contacted a few close Christian friends, and we invited about 20 men on a weekend retreat. 

The Northern Virginia chapter was established and has been meeting every Wednesday morning since May 1985, albeit by Zoom in recent years.  Over the years, hundreds of men have been invited to experience the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit in a much fuller way, countless lives have been changed through these retreats and weekly meetings, and many workplaces impacted. 

I didn’t do anything special.  Like my friend Jim said, I just showed up.  God was already there through his Holy Spirit, touching and changing lives.

Are you showing up to be God’s presence to the people in your life?

“Shout joyfully to the Lord, all you lands; worship the Lord with cries of gladness; come before him with joyful song.” (Psalm 100:1)

Thirty-five other psalms begin with this same encouragement according to my cursory search.  St. Paul urges us to: “Rejoice in the Lord always. (Phil. 4:4)  Jesus in his Lord’s Prayer begins with “Our Father in heaven, hollowed be your name…”  

A number of years ago, our daughter Emily, who was born with Down syndrome, showed me how we should approach the Father with praise and worship.  We were at mass, and I was serving as a Eucharistic minister and just happened to be serving the isle in which she and my wife were coming down. When she realized that she was coming to me for communion, her face lit up with that big beautiful smile of hers, she held out her cupped hands to receive the body of Christ and started running toward me exclaiming loudly, “Daddy!”  It was an expression of complete and total love. 

My heart melted with her response, but then I thought, isn’t this how God would like all of us to approach him – unreservedly expressing our love and joy for him, not worrying about what others might think. 

While I often begin my prayer time each day with some praise, I am not sure I fulfill the expectation of the psalms or the level of commitment suggested by Jesus in his Greatest Commandment to “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Mt. 22:37) How often does my praise come from duty or a routine approach, instead of a joyful heart?

As the Psalmist says, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise.” (Psalm 8:2 NIV)

May we follow their example and sing hymns with enthusiasm, offer our prayers and responses with fervor, and seek the Lord with a pure heart.

“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?  We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” (Mt. 2:1-2)

As we know from listening to the story of the Magi every Christmas season, it was the star that led them to the Christ child.  Saint Leo the Great, Pope from 440 – 461, said we should imitate the star of Bethlehem in guiding and leading people to Jesus.  

Just as God took on flesh and blood through the power of the Holy Spirit with the Virgin Mary, so too, he takes on flesh and blood in us through the power of Holy Spirit.  God calls us to be his presence in the world and to bring that presence to the people in our lives – family, friends, colleagues and even strangers. 

Just before Christmas, Jerry Belt, a good friend of 40 years, died at age 94.  I first met Jerry on a Christians in Commerce retreat in 1985.  From then up to the time of his death he had a passion to introduce people to Jesus Christ.  For the past six years, he spear-headed a parish renewal effort at St. Mark in Vienna, VA, to encourage people to experience a personal encounter with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit through the Alpha program.  Alpha is a series of videos coupled with small group discussion and prayers for people to experience a personal encounter with Jesus and the release of the power of the Holy Spirit.  More than 400 people in our parish have experienced Alpha and the deepening of their faith.

With most people as they grow older, their enthusiasm and energy begin to diminish, but not Jerry’s.  Up and until the last few months, his passion to encourage people to experience a personal relationship with Jesus continued unabated.     

Like the star of Bethlehem, Jerry led people to Jesus.  As we move into this new year, let us imitate the star and Jerry, and by our prayer, example and words, lead the people in our lives to experience Jesus more fully.