VIDEO: Can I Enjoy My Work?

You know one of the things we talk about here at The Stone Table is how our stories, the story of our life, the story of our careers, really the story of everything as a follower of Jesus, is really part of a much greater story. We talk about our work and the great story and I’ve had some folks ask me, you know, “What does it look like to engage my work and my career and my vocation through that great story? Is it ok if I like my work? Is it ok if I pursue a career that excites me? Is it okay if I make money and profit from my work? Or, does embedding my story in a greater story mean that I can’t enjoy any of those things?” And I would say, “Of course not.” You know to embed our story in the larger story of God, is simply about understanding the origins and endings. You know if my story begins the day I was born and ends the day I die then I have seventy, eighty, ninety years of story, of storyline, of which I am the main character. But what God calls us to, and what the gospel calls us to, is actually to embed this season of life, that we have been granted by the grace of our Creator, and embed that within this large, eternal meta-narrative that God has been telling since the beginning of time. And that will last throughout eternity and so we have been invited to take our lives, our little stories and embed them, not as main characters (we are not the hero of the story), but we embed our stories into the large meta-narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration this story of God’s pursuit of His lost creation that he has been telling really since Genesis 1. So that’s what it means; it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy our work, it doesn’t mean we can’t profit from our work, it doesn’t mean we can’t find purpose and meaning or pursue jobs that scratch that itch, so to speak, but it does mean that we need to see everything in our lives as part of a much greater narrative that God has called us to. We are characters in God’s great story, we have been invited into the redemption story of the Creator of the universe Himself. And that’s what it means to embed our work in the great story of God.