Why We Work

The office has gone quiet. I pause a moment from my calculations and spreadsheet, remove my glasses. Pressing my fingertips into pressure points, I listen to the rhythm and low hum of machines outside the main office. I take a deep breath and shift, realizing that one foot has found its way out of my shoe and sought the cool ceramic of the office floor.

I wiggle and stretch my toes wondering how it came to be this way. When did work became more than just the daily grind to earn a paycheck?

We are taught, I think, that work is the necessary evil of adulthood. Parents scoop potatoes and beans at dinner and speak about the day when a child will need to earn her own keep. Go to college. Get good grades. Get a good job. Ask for more money when given more responsibility. Save for retirement.

As an incentive we encourage youth to find a job they love. Something, presumably, that will feel more like endless days of hobbying rather than work. I’ve wondered about that over the years. Are there really people who work at something that never feels like work? I should like very much to meet them.

I took a job to pay the bills. Student debt loomed close and there was a wedding on the horizon. After the wedding there was another job. I worked and slogged through. Another day another dollar.

When I took this job, and particularly when I accepted a promotion recently, it did not occur to me that work could be something more than providing for my family. I knew what work was: you give your best, you succeed, accomplish, put in the hours. You arrive on time, stay late when needed.

What we forget, I think, when teaching our children is that as Christians in a secular workplace we exist to be the ones who care less about the daily paycheck and more about the people around them. That these people we spend more time with than our families are more than just coworkers: they are the reason we work.

Tonight I am the last in the office. The big hand ticks past six and I know that the reason I am still at my desk is not for the dollar it might earn me. The reason I have yet to close my computer and pack up is because my work impacts the jobs of those around me. If the company remains profitable, my coworkers can come in tomorrow. If our management team improves the bottom line, the guys in the warehouse and the financial clerk and the handy man can continue to support their families.

My boss calls it servant leadership. I'm sure other people call it other things. Whatever you call it, it's changed the reason I get in my car each morning and drive past vineyards and orchards and industrial yards. It's the reason I sometimes hide in a bathroom stall to squeeze my eyes shut and beg God to put a thirty pound paper weight on my too-quick-to-criticize tongue.

And this coming to work to serve deal? It's why I am so grateful that my job is more than just another dollar earned, another time card punched. It's why I love my job.

"But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:43-45