"He who labors as he prays, lifts his heart to God with his hands," wrote Bernard of Clairvaux in 1130 A.D. He might have written, "... in his calloused hands." It is ever as the old Latin truism says, "labor omnia vincit" -- "work conquers everything." Our work, our jobs define our lives and tell us in part why we're in the world.
Jesus' work was a redeeming work. On the cross, Jesus was not only faithful in providing eternal life, but Jesus also remains faithful in providing for us those material goods which we need to endure and to live every day of our lives. "Every good and every perfect (and every material) gift," says James, "comes down from the Father above" (
James 1:17).
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Many of the most popular songs across the years speak of how important our jobs are! Some years ago there was a country and western song -- a kind of crass song -- whose opening line was "Take this job and ..." well, you know the rest, of course. Obviously the songwriter was not happy with his job. The chorus of another song, popular when I was in high school, said, "Yip yip yip yip boom boom boom boom, get a job! Sha la la la, sha la la la."
Tennessee Ernie Ford once sang, "You load sixteen tons and what do you get?/Another day older and deeper in debt./St. Peter don't you call me cause I can't go/I owe my soul to the company store."
Or, the ever-popular campfire sing-along song which went:
I've been working on the railroadAll the live-long day.....Can't you hear that whistle blowingRise up so early in the morn.Can't you hear the captain shouting"Dinah, blow your horn!"And about five o'clock in the afternoon, that song changes to, "Dinah won't you blow? Dinah won't you blow?" Haven't we all felt a little like that, waiting for that whistle sometimes? Remember that old black slave in
Showboat, who stood looking out over the Mississippi and sang,
You and me, we sweat and strain,Bodies all weary and wracked with pain.Tote that barge, lift that bale,Get a little drunk and you land in jail.A fella gets weary, and tired of tryin'Sick of livin' and scared of dyin,But Old Man RiverHe just keeps rollin along.One of my favorite bumper stickers amends the song of the Disney dwarfs to say, "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!" It happens day after day.
When Pearl Bailey was doing the black Dolly on Broadway, she would often finish her performances by sitting down on the circular ramp face out into the audience. There she would sit and talk with the crowd. One night somebody asked her, "Miss Bailey, why do you do this every night? Why don't you just sing your role and go home?"
"You know," she replied, "these people work hard all week long. Somehow when they come here on Friday night, I feel if I can just make them laugh and forget how heavy and hard their work week has been, I'll feel a little like Jesus, who in
Matthew 11:28, said, 'Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.'"