The real reason we have a “Labor” Day 🌞 👷👩🏭👨🏭✝️⛪
Posted : 1 Sep, 2024 12:05 PM
As believers in Christ, we find profound significance in labor. In the Bible’s creation account, the opening scene depicts God at work. It begins with God working: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). And it ends with God working: “By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Gen 2:2-3).
What’s more, smack dab in the middle of the creation account, we learn that God created human beings to work. He tells Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply,” which means that humans are to build families and societies. And, He tells them to “till the soil” and “have dominion,” meaning that we are supposed to work hard and manage God’s good world so that we can provide for the families and societies we have created.
What is clear from the very beginning of God’s Word is that work is not a curse but rather a good purpose through which humanity lives out a life of obedient worship to God. While work, service, and worship do not share the same connotation in modern English, the same word — avodah — is frequently used for each of these concepts in the Hebrew Scripture. “Work” and “worship” are two translations of the same word (Genesis 2:15). As Tom Nelson notes in his book, “Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work,” work and worship are not separate activities but are seamlessly integrated. Not only that but this relationship between work and worship is understood in the context of genuine liberation, as opposed to menial slavery.
The Bible’s opening scene also underscores the importance of rest and leisure. God himself rested after working, and he expects us to do the same through natural rhythms such as sleep and a divinely ordained day of rest, Sunday.
If God is the one who commands us to rest after our labors, we should take heed. There is no honor in working relentlessly, with no rest, merely for the sake of wealth accumulation or some other motivation. But there is honor in working hard and then resting seriously. After all, God himself rested after his six days of creation. If rest is good enough for God, it should be good enough for us, too.
