Our Work

           For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

         There’s a story on Face Book, falsely attributed to Albert Einstein  I found a website that investigated it. It turns out that in 1898, “An Educational Allegory” and published in the “Journal of Education.” The author listed was Aesop, Jr., but was later identified as Amos E. Dolbear of Tufts, a prominent physicist and inventor.  It’s an allegory about animals in a school who are told that to graduate, they have to climb a tree. Of course, fish, eagles, and horses could never graduate. Curiously, from what I’ve seen about ancient Jewish taxonomy, they seem more interested in considering the lessons of this allegory than on appearances. Bats, which (of course) fly remarkably well for mammals, are classed with things that fly: birds. But I digress.

         It seems to me that God may have had something like this allegory in mind when He created the universe .According to today’s verse, He prepared works for us to do. In Exodus, He tells Moses that He has given certain individuals the abilities needed to work on the tabernacle. It doesn’t make clear whether these are miraculously given, or prepared in advance. The fact that He tells Moses who to choose makes me think the former, but at this point, Moses had probably lived among the Hebrew slaves for less than a year. If you moved into a new city, with even a few thousand residents, how well would you know their skills and talents after only a year there? And whether what we would call it a natural skill, a learned skill, or a miraculous skill, God gave it. For most of us, our skills are on the spectrum of natural to learned, meaning that they are a combination of the two.

         I believe there is only one job that only one person who lived could have done. Only Jesus could have done what Jesus did. Other than that, you could be the only person present who could do it, but that’s not the same thing. In short, if you fail it’s not the end of the world, not the last chance .Another fact about the tasks God prepared for us is that the things we tend to think of as being those tasks may not be.  Most of us would like to be the person who saves the world from immanent disaster.

          I know I long to do something that matters. I don’t need to prevent a war or a terrorist attack but I long to do something that has the potential to make the world a better place. I want it to be something bigger than picking up trash on my morning walks. I want it to be something more significant than arguing with someone. I’d like it to be more direct even than the possibility of my encouraging someone who someday does something significant. I’d like it to be something far more glorious than anything I have already done. I’m desperate to discover that I have not already done it, but it could have. I might have done what God created me to do without even noticing it.

          But that brings up another important issue. We seem to have this notion that whatever this significant task might be, it is singular. Yes, God could have put you on this planet to do one thing, to be standing on a corner one sunny afternoon when a car drives by, and praying on impulse for the passengers in the car. That could be it, but I’m going to suggest that God isn’t wasteful.

          You may not be the only person who can do what God has planned for you to do. You may not recognize it as God’s assignment for you. But I think it’s helpful to believe that there is something  significant waiting for each of us to do each day – perhaps even each second – because it reminds us that God does have a purpose for us. If we don’t see it, the fault is in our vision.