Heaven's calendar has seven Sundays a week. God sanctifies each
day. He conducts holy business at all hours and in all places. He
uncommons the common by turning kitchen sinks into shrines,
cafés into convents, and nine-to-five workdays into spiritual adventures.
 
Workdays? Yes, workdays. He ordained your work as something good.
Before he gave Adam a wife or a child, even before he gave Adam britches,
God gave Adam a job. "Then the LORD God took the man and put him
into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it" (Gen. 2:15 NASB).
Innocence, not indolence, characterized the first family.
 
God views work worthy of its own engraved commandment: "You shall
work six days, but on the seventh day you shall rest" (Exod. 34:21 NASB).
We like the second half of that verse. But emphasis on the day of rest
might cause us to miss the command to work: "You shall work six days."
Whether you work at home or in the marketplace, your work matters to God.
 
And your work matters to society. We need you! Cities need plumbers.
Nations need soldiers. Stoplights break. Bones break. We need people
to repair the first and set the second. Someone has to raise kids, raise
cane, and manage the kids who raise Cain.
 
Whether you log on or lace up for the day, you imitate God. Jehovah
himself worked for the first six days of creation. Jesus said, "My Father
never stops working, and so I keep working, too" (John 5:17 NCV). Your
career consumes half of your lifetime. Shouldn't it broadcast God? Don't
those forty to sixty hours a week belong to him as well?
 
The Bible never promotes workaholism or an addiction to employment as
pain medication. But God unilaterally calls all the physically able to till the
gardens he gives. God honors work. So honor God in your work. "There is
nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his
labor is good" (Eccles. 2:24 NASB).
 
Here is the big idea:
 
Use your uniqueness (what you do)
to make a big deal out of God (why you do it)
every day of your life (where you do it).
 
At the convergence of all three, you'll find the cure for the common life:
your sweet spot.
 
Max Lucado
 
From: Cure for the Common Life: Living in Your Sweet Spot
© (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2005)