In your lifetime, you’ll spend about 90,000 hours at work. With the possible exception of sleep, you’ll spend more time working than any other activity. It’s worth asking, then, why do we work for so long a time?
Work serves many purposes:
- It’s a way to provide the necessities of life: food, clothing, and shelter.
- It’s a way to provide for our future in the form of retirement savings.
- It’s a way to provide for emergencies in the form of regular savings.
- It’s a way to provide health insurance for ourselves and our families.
- It’s a way to provide for the needs of others who are unable to work.
- It’s a way to constructively occupy our time.
- It’s a way to contribute to our communities.
Work serves many purposes. But for all the good that manual labor does, it CANNOT ultimately secure the most important things.
The prophet Isaiah said (Isaiah 55.1-3):
“Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
And you who have no money come, buy, and eat.
Come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without cost.
“Why do you spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourself in abundance.
“Incline your ear and come to Me.
Listen, that you may live;
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
According to the faithful mercies shown to David.”
Ultimately, material things don’t satisfy our deepest desires. Food for the body is important, but food for the soul is what we need most. We may work hard, save, economize, watch our expenses, cut corners, clip coupons, and even cut back on the Amazon, and still not be satisfied.
Through Isaiah, God invited his people to a feast that satisfied their hunger and quenched their thirst. He invited them – and us – into a relationship that that brings abundance, delight, and fulfillment. A relationship with the God whose resources are infinite. A relationship with the God who knows what we need, and who offers us even more.
Each and every day, work hard, but remember what matters most.