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.  Our purpose is to take care of creation until God is, as St. Paul says, “all in all.” (1 Cor. 15:28)

All work that contributes to the production of goods and services for others, unless it is immoral, is part of God’s plan for creation.  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 characterizes it as a “thread in the larger fabric of civilization.”  The difference between barbarism and culture is, simply, work, which flowers into civilization.”  

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.”  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. 

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