Work—A Gift or a Curse?

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans were laid off or sent on furlough. Meanwhile, I still had goats to feed, crops to cultivate, and honeybees to tend—not to mention emails to send, brochures to design, and video calls to attend. As both a farmer and digital marketing professional, my to-do list is never done. And while families across the country grappled with unemployment, for the most part work continued as usual here at Harmony Hillside, the small “hobby” farm I keep with my wife and two daughters in Northern Kentucky.

But did all those people out of a job stop working? As I kept up the labor of love on our family farm, many of those who were suddenly unemployed spent their newfound free time taking up creative hobbies like baking, woodworking, writing, and gardening—or just catching up on projects around the house. Are these enjoyable but unpaid pursuits still legitimate work according to the Bible?

Scripture says a lot about work, starting in the first chapter of Genesis. Life in a fallen world has warped our view of labor, but from the beginning God created us for work—not only to earn a living, but also to find enjoyment and fulfillment. In fact, life is far more about work than we might realize.

Fulfilling Work in a Fallen World

Around 4:45 p.m. when you blink your burning eyes and straighten your body from where you’ve hunched over a computer all day, it’s hard to remember that work was a perfect part of the prefall creation. Adam and Eve received the first-ever job assignment in the garden of Eden, “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). This charge to carefully steward the resources God has given still applies to us today, whether in technology, finance, construction, or any other profession. Our labor is one of the ways we display the image of God and exercise dominion as stewards of his creation. Work is how we fulfill the charge to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28).

Work isn’t a result of the fall. But ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed, sin has skewed humanity’s relationship with work. God sentenced Adam to a life of toil by the sweat of his brow, not just the passion in his heart. As much as I love growing our own food on the farm, I literally feel that “sweat of the brow” consequence while weeding under the blazing sun in July or fixing a fence in the numbing cold of January. For other workers, the toil might come through incompetent managers, disloyal companies, uninteresting or monotonous roles, and our own aversion—or addiction—to work. Pain and stress have degraded work into toil as a result of the curse.

But even in a sin-scarred cosmos, work is a gift that comes with God’s blessing. Scripture says that everyone should “take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man” (Ecclesiastes 3:13; c.f. 3:22). Because we do not easily find pleasure in our toil, our Creator modeled what it looks like. During the six days of creation, God repeatedly paused to survey with pleasure what he had made. Not just once or twice, but seven times we read that God looked at his work and saw that it was good (Genesis 1).

What a beautiful example for us to follow! In your own daily work, how often do you take a moment to look over what you’ve accomplished and enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done? Imitating God by consciously taking pleasure in our work is a simple way that we can experience his blessing and find fulfilment in otherwise unpleasant toil. And a job doesn’t need to be especially significant or glamorous to be enjoyable. A well-written email or cleanly swept floor is the perfect opportunity to take a deep breath—before moving on to the next thing—and glorify God with a quiet prayer of thanks for his enabling grace. Even the humblest tasks are infused with meaning when we do them faithfully and circumspectly for the glory of God.

Most of Life Is Work

Finding joy and fulfillment in our work is especially important, considering how much of our time on earth consists of work. We tend to think of work as a person’s job, whatever they do to make a living. We’re used to phrases such as “Leave work at work,” “I’m heading to work,” or “I’m taking time off work.” But earning a wage is only one aspect of work in Scripture. God didn’t pay Adam for his gardening efforts. The labor itself was his reward. Tending the garden was Adam and Eve’s vocation—a calling to use their heart, mind, and strength to serve the Lord, to provide for themselves, and to care for the creatures and landscape.

The Creator himself worked in the very beginning when he “made the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Just as God worked to form the earth, so Adam worked to care for it—not out of necessity but as an expression of creativity and love. Biblical work, then, means using our God-given powers of heart, mind, and strength to create or achieve something that pleases and glorifies the Lord. Put simply, work is any productive action.

With this definition, we find that most of life is some sort of work or endeavor, even artistic, athletic, or entertaining pursuits. If you’ve ever met a hobbyist, you know the intensive efforts that can go into even a pastime like building miniature dioramas or stitching intricate embroideries. We engage in many productive actions for which we receive no reimbursement except our own pleasure or the joy of blessing our family and friends.

Often we find our greatest enjoyment in what we accomplish “off the clock,” so it may seem strange to refer to these activities as work. After all, we’ve come to expect that work happens somewhere other than our home, which is a place of rest and recreation. However, only in the past two or three generations did it become normal for most of us to “go to work” far away from home. And that may be changing again.

Do Your Home Work

With the advent of fast internet connections, telecommuting has soared in popularity—a trend that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. For millions across the US and around the world, work has infiltrated homes, the place we had long associated with reprieve.

As the division vanishes between workplace and home, business and lifestyle bloggers speculate about what will happen to our work-life balance as a result. How can the modern worker focus on that important Zoom meeting with a toddler or Yorkshire terrier whining in the background?

However, most people seem to forget that working from home is not new at all. It’s as old as creation and the first man and woman. As we’ve already seen, Eden was both home and workplace for Adam and Eve. Of course, there is a distinction: Adam’s work was at home, not from home.

Throughout history, most of the foundational work of any society has taken place at home. In fact, Scripture dedicates a chapter to an example of God-glorifying “home” work in Proverbs 31. The “excellent wife” works diligently at tasks big and small, making food and clothing for her household while also producing merchandise to sell. Though our society today tragically undervalues washing dishes, changing diapers, and all the other uncelebrated work of stay-at-home moms and dads, in God’s economy, these unpaid efforts do not go unnoticed or unrewarded. Proverbs 31 stands as a testimony to the enduring value of “insignificant” housework.

From the time of Adam to Noah to Jesus and even to as recently as a century ago, most people have worked primarily at or near their homes. Only since the Industrial Revolution (c. 1770–1820) have people drawn a firm line between work and home. As Wendell Berry put it in his book The Unsettling of America,

The history of our time has been to a considerable extent the movement of the center of consciousness away from the home. Once, some farmers, particularly in Europe, lived in their barns—and so were both at work and at home. Work and rest, work and pleasure, were continuous with each other, often not distinct from each other at all. . . . Once, many people lived by “Cottage Industries”—home production. Once, households were producers and processors of food, centers of their own maintenance, adornment, and repair, places of instruction and amusement.1

As someone who works both from home (for a computer-based job) and at home (on our family farm and homestead), I am grateful for the option of remote work that lets me flow seamlessly between paid and unpaid work. I can step away from the keyboard for a moment to stoke the fire in our woodstove or collect fresh eggs from the chicken coop. I can finish a video call and walk out to assist my daughter with a math problem at the kitchen table, or help my wife catch up with the dishes during my lunch break. Oddly enough, the industrialization that moved work away from the home has come full circle with the modern “home office” and telecommuting.

Naturally, the work-from-home arrangement raises concerns about how to balance a remote job with the rest of life. Professional and personal interests can interfere with each other if we don’t manage time and attention well—hence all the talk these days about work-life balance.

Finding the Work-Rest Balance

The concept of separating work and leisure time emerged in response to extreme overwork in factories during the Industrial Revolution. Then in 1986 the phrase “work-and-life balance” was first introduced, and it has soared in popularity since the early 2000s.2

Although the modern notion of work-life balance is well meaning, we see throughout Scripture that most of life is work, interspersed with periods of rest.

Although the modern notion of work-life balance is well meaning, it implies a divide between work and life, as if these were two opposite sides of a seesaw that must be balanced against each other. Instead, we see throughout Scripture that most of life is work, interspersed with periods of rest.

Rather than work-life balance, a better term would be work-rest balance. This is more than semantics; it’s how the Bible speaks about these topics. From the first pages of Genesis, God modeled a proper work-rest balance for us by doing the work of creation in six days and resting on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2). Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

In making his covenant with the nation of Israel in the Ten Commandments, God established this six-to-one pattern of work and rest as part of their worship:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep 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. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8–11)

This pattern of work and Sabbath rest was not only for people but also for working animals (Exodus 23:12) and even the land itself (Leviticus 25:3–5). And Sabbath rest didn’t only apply to “professional” work but to unnecessary work around the home as well. Even starting a fire or gathering sticks was forbidden on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:3; c.f. Numbers 15:32–36). Though we are no longer bound to follow all of these Sabbath laws, God clearly takes work and rest seriously.

Another prominent example of a biblical work-rest balance shows up in the rhythm of day and night. God designed us to need sleep, so he graciously made the sun and earth to distinguish between times of work and rest. As the Psalmist says, “When the sun rises, . . . Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening” (Psalm 104:22–23).

In harmony with this cycle of day and night, the Creator made our bodies to follow a circadian rhythm that responds to the color and intensity of light in our environment. Bright light wakes us up, and darkness encourages sleepiness. Only since the invention of electric lights have humans been able to disregard this natural rhythm of day and night, work and rest. Multiple studies have now shown blue light from electronic screens and other disruptions of the circadian rhythm to be harmful to our health, so we would be wise to honor God’s design and prioritize a healthy work-rest balance.

In the Hebrew language, the word shabbath meaning “sabbath” is closely related to shabath meaning “to cease, desist, rest.” So the biblical concept of rest can be summed up as ceasing from our labors. To rest is to stop working, to be still. Sleep is rest, but so is a contemplative walk in the forest, a Sunday worship service, a meaningful conversation, a good book, or a board game with friends. Some productive activities can be restful as well, and there is not always a clear line between working and resting—but you know when you’re experiencing each.

Rest, in body and mind, happens when we slow down and stop striving to accomplish our goals. It exposes our vulnerability, requiring us to exercise trust in God while we cease from achieving for a while. We are not omnipotent; we are finite human beings who need margin in our lives. Whenever we refuse to make space for rest, we deny our humanity and spurn God’s design. And although it can be hard to lay aside the endless to-do list, rest is a blessing, just like work. By finding the appropriate work-rest balance, we can revel in God’s gift of both.

When we spend our entire existence living for after-work hours, we miss the enjoyment and purpose that God wants us to discover in our labor.

God designed the balance of life to include more work than rest, as the commandment says, “six days you shall labor” (Exodus 20:9). If we constantly pit our work against our “life,” we will consider work to be draining and will save the best of our efforts for the “off work” times, idolizing rest and creating an unbiblical symmetry. When we spend our entire existence living for after-work hours, we miss the enjoyment and purpose that God wants us to discover in our labor.

Made for Work

Work is not at odds with life. Indeed, most of life is work, by God’s wise design. You and I are created for work and called to labor with all our heart “for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23). The respected career and menial task as well as personal pursuits alike have purpose and dignity for us as God’s image-bearers and stewards. Whether punching the clock or planting pansies, crunching numbers or baking pastries, our endeavors can bring glory to God when we work as unto him. Despite the struggle in our fallen world, work is still good, and enjoyment in our labor is the gift of God.