The Rest of God

by Mark Buchanan

  It’s all the Lord’s work.

  The Protestant reformer Martin Luther put it well:

  The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays—not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.

  Os Guinness, in his book The Call, tells the story of Jane Lucretia D’Esterre, a young mother and widow living in Scotland in the 1800s. Jane fell into despair over difficult circumstances and one dark day went down to the river to drown herself. But as she stood on the bridge, she looked up. She saw a field across the river, and in it a young man plowing. He worked with such skill and care and concentration that she became absorbed in the sight of it. Her fascination turned to wonder, and her wonder to thanksgiving, and her thanksgiving to a sense of purpose. She rose, went forth, and lived a long and productive life.5

  She simply saw a man about the Lord’s work.

  There is sanctity in honest work. There is something in it that pleases, not just the eyes of man, but the heart of God:

  Each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches. . . . Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him. Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you— although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him to. (1 Corinthians 7:17, 20–24)

  A common problem in the early days of the church was that when a slave became a believer, he then assumed that the Lord wouldn’t have him do something so menial and beneath his dignity as slave work.

  But Paul thought otherwise:

  Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. (Ephesians 6:5–8)

  The opposite of a slave is not a free man. It’s a worshiper. The one who is most free is the one who turns the work of his hands into sacrament, into offering. All he makes and all he does are gifts from God, through God, and to God. Just as simple bread and juice, when we eat and drink them in a spirit of thanksgiving and faith, become the very presence of Christ, so simple tasks—preparing sermons, cooking soup, cutting grass, growing corn—when done in the same spirit, are holy. It is all the Lord’s work. Virtually any job, no matter how grueling or tedious—any job that is not criminal or sinful—can be a gift from God, through God, and to God. The work of our hands, by the alchemy of our devotion, becomes the worship of our hearts.

  And more. Work done in such a spirit has the power to reveal Christ himself. It not only makes Christ attractive, it makes Christ known. Jesus showed the full extent of his love by washing his disciples’ feet. He loved them by performing an act of servanthood so menial, so abased, that it was customarily assigned to the lowest household slave. At their final meal together, as his followers were still jockeying for pride of place, Jesus became their servant. Peter or Bartholomew or John or Judas—it was unthinkable that one of them would have lowered himself to this. Better it be left undone than I stoop this low. It was completely beyond all they asked or imagined that their Master and their Teacher—their Lord—would do it: that he would bow down and cradle in his hands, one by one, their cracked and dusty feet, blistered and calloused and reeking of roadways. That he’d ladle cool water on them, rubbing the dirt loose in his palms.

  But that’s what he did. That’s how he showed the full extent of his love. And he told us we would be blessed if we did this also.

  That’s the Lord’s work.

  What kind of work do you do?

  SABBATH LITURGY:

  Establishing the Work of Your Hands

  My first real job, beyond household chores, was delivering daily newspapers to over a hundred mailboxes. Some of my route sprawled through a semirural area—tar-papered houses in fields of stone and scrub, with a droop-bellied horse or a spindly legged goat idling about, a yappy dog on the loose. I walked that route a thousand times. I walked it in blazes of sunshine and in blizzards of snow. I walked it beneath the heavens’ benediction and the sky’s cursing, over earth hard with cold or soft with mud. The thin strap of my carrier bag cut a nearly indelible groove into my shoulder. Some days in school I sat at my desk and rubbed my collarbone like an amulet, hoping to coax the soreness from it, to caress strength into it.

  I learned early to hate work. Long before I ever read Genesis 3 and the hex God put on our labor—a thorny and sweaty thing it is—I understood full well anyhow. Those papers smudged my hands black with ink. They left my back cramped and aching. Many times I was attacked by dogs. On occasion I was cursed out by someone who found his paper wind-tossed or rain-drenched when he went to fetch it.

  My father taught me to work hard, to bend my shoulder to a task until I finished it, regardless of how wearying or tedious it was. He instilled in me a solid work ethic and an attitude equivalent to what the apostle Paul taught the Thessalonians: if you don’t work, you won’t eat.

  But he never said you had to like it, or if he did, I missed that lesson.

  After I had been through several jobs—gas jockey, short-order cook, house painter, grocery boy, baker’s helper—and found some reason, several reasons, to despise them all, I began to wonder if there was a better way.

  There was. The apostle Paul, instructing slaves, became my teacher. His best and most enduring lesson was this: whatever you can do with a clean conscience, you can do to the glory of God. No work is so menial that it cannot be rendered as worship. As I began to knead the reality of that truth into the details of my tasks, my attitude changed dramatically. I found joy in toil. My attitude, once toxic, turned tonic. I was not just inspired for the work; I became, for others, inspiring in it.

  What if your work became worship? What if the work of your hands—repairing lawn mowers, scouring pots, paving streets, mending bones, balancing ledgers—was Eucharistic, a sacrament of God’s presence that you gave and received? What if Jesus himself was your boss, the One who watched over you and whom you honored with your efforts?

  Here’s a radical idea: next time you’re tempted to complain about your work, praise God for it instead. Next time you open your mouth to gossip about people you work with or smear those you work for, stop yourself and turn in the other direction: pray for them, thank God for them, find the good in them. Next time you want to quit, pour that into worship.

  Why not right now? Put down the book and take up, Eucharist-like, the work of your hands. Lift it to God. Receive it with thanksgiving. Offer it with sincerity. Name the ways this work has blessed you, provided for you, allowed you to be a blessing. Pray for those you work with—your employees, your employers, your colleagues, your clients. Look at the things around you that your work has provided: the clothes you wear, the shoes you walk in, the food in fridge and cupboard, the table you eat at, the car you drive. Even if it’s not much, it’s more than nothing. Say something like this: “God, I praise you that there is food to spare in this home. I praise you that I was able to pay the electric bill this month to cook that food and had a chair I could sit in to partake of it.”

  God wants to establish the work of your hands, but he’s asking you to lend a hand.

  TWO

  A BEAUTIFUL MIND:

  Stopping to Think Anew

  In my early days as a pastor, I po
ssessed a dangerous combination of naiveté and cockiness. I was untrained for this work—it’s a long story—and yet somehow that produced in me the opposite effect of what it should have. Instead of modesty, I exuded brashness, and instead of caution, rashness. I was a mix of foolhardy and swagger. I had my Bible, a couple of arts degrees, a gift for gab.

  What more did I need?

  So when a woman called about her twelve-year-old stepson, Jason, and described to me his unruliness, I confidently assured her that a quick session or two with me would fix the problem.

  The next day, the woman and Jason showed up in my office. They typically had nothing to do with churches or pastors, but the woman was desperate and broke and had nowhere else to turn. She sat at seat’s edge, weary and jittery, words scattering from her like flak. Jason slumped in his chair, sullen and monosyllabic.

  The stepmom recited a litany of the stepson’s wrongdoing: Outright defiance. Abusive language. Extreme withdrawal. Vandalism—smashing plates, kicking holes in walls and doors, keying cars, thrashing the cat. Threats and violence toward her and her daughter. Stealing money from her purse. Stealing her jewelry and pawning it. Cannabis seeds in his jeans pockets. And now, what had prompted the call, getting caught shoplifting. The police had brought him home handcuffed.

  After five minutes of this, I knew I was out of my depth.

  The stepmom kept cataloging, with mounting shrillness, Jason’s myriad and random acts of badness (all the while he sat there limp and silent, as though dying from a bullet wound). Then she stopped. She was ready now for me to fix it all, just as I’d promised.

  I swallowed hard and said, “Um.”

  I shuffled the papers on my desk. I arranged the pens there in interesting geometrical designs: squares, triangles, hexagons, intersected diamonds. I took a breath and said, “Um.”

  And then, slowly and piecemeal, just playing for time, I began to sort out the story of how they ended up in the same household. It was a tale of family brokenness stretching back for generations. Jason’s mother was a drug addict, and later a prostitute. She had Jason when she was only a teenager and left him and his father when Jason was only months old.

  Later, when Jason was about five years old, she came back. By then Jason’s father had remarried, and the stepmom—this woman before me—was caring for the boy. But Jason’s birth mother wanted her baby back. She wanted to be a good mom. She wanted to start a home, settle down, make a life for both of them.

  And she tried. She tried for almost a month. But she was overwhelmed by it. She got angry at every little thing. She resented the money and time it took to be a parent. She was dangerously negligent, leaving Jason alone while she went out with her male friends.

  Three weeks into it, she abandoned the idea of motherhood. She left once more, never to be seen or heard from since.

  Now I was really out of my depth. My temptation was to look at my watch, announce their hour was up, thank them for coming, and show them the door. Instead, I started praying, eyes open: “Oh God, what now? It’s my turn. I’m supposed to be wise. I’m supposed to help these people. But I’ve got nothing to give. Lord, you see their plight. You see mine. I’m sorry I thought I was equal to this. I’m not. You are. Help.”

  And then I prayed this: “Lord, please give me the wisdom of Solomon.”

  What dropped into my head right then, bright as a coin falling into water, was a story about Solomon. Solomon, the Bible says, was the wisest man on earth. His wisdom surpassed all who came before him and all who came after. It was of such renown that kings and queens traveled from great distances to sit at Solomon’s feet and drink in his words. It was of such enduring substance that, distilled into proverbs, it still guides parents, pastors, teachers, politicians, leaders.

  Legendary wisdom.

  But the Bible gives only one example of it in action. It’s the story of two prostitutes who come to Solomon for a ruling. The girls have been roommates, each the mother of a son. One child has died. Both claim to be the mother of the surviving child. They’ve fought bitterly over this. Their grievance has reached the place where only the wisest man in the world can bring resolution.

  And so they seek audience with Solomon. The women’s rivalry and controversy are so combustible they erupt right there, in the king’s court. In response, the king himself erupts. “Bring me a sword!” he hollers. “Cut this child in two; give half to each.”

  This from the wisest man on earth.

  I’m praying with my eyes open, asking for the wisdom of Solomon, and in pops this story. I’m puzzled. It seems to me that Solomon just wanted this thing over with, these squabbling women and this squalling child out of his way—not unlike my wanting Jason and his stepmom gone. It seems to me he’s merely run out of patience.

  Then the lights go on.

  “Jason,” I say, “look at me.”

  He does, halfhearted.

  “No, Jason. Really look at me. I need you to listen very carefully.”

  A slight stirring beneath the crust of his apathy.

  “Are you listening?”

  He nods.

  “All right. There’s a story in the Bible about a king, a very wise king, so wise that everyone in the whole earth sought his wisdom. His name was Solomon. Ever heard about him?”

  No.

  “Well,” I continue, “he was very wise. But there’s only one story we have to prove it. It’s a strange story, about two women with one child. Both claim to be the child’s mother. Neither will give way— and, of course, they both can’t be the mother, can they?”

  No.

  “Right. So the two women come to this wise king Solomon to have him sort it out. Now, if I were Solomon, here’s what I’d do: I’d order an investigation. I’d call for DNA tests. Or I’d cross-examine these two women with such skill and cunning that I’d tease out one or the other’s deceit.

  “But Solomon doesn’t do this. He does something that seems reckless. He asks for a sword and proposes to cut the baby in two and give half to each woman.”

  I pause. The story’s oddness blooms thick in the silence.

  “Jason, are you still listening?”

  Yes.

  “A funny thing happens next. One of the women steps up and says, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let this thing go this far. Give the baby to her.’ See, Solomon calls their bluff, and it works.

  “Now, Jason, I have a question. Ready?”

  Yes.

  “Who do you think was the real mother?”

  Jason answered without blinking: “The woman who gave the child away.”

  “Jason, you’re right. How did you know?”

  “Well,” he said, “because she didn’t want the baby killed.”

  “Because she loved him?”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. “She loved her child so much, she’d rather see him alive and whole in another woman’s arms than dead and dismembered in her own.

  “Jason, was that your mother? Was that what she did with you? She’d rather lose you by giving you away than lose you in a worse way by trying to keep you?”

  The things you wish you had a camera for: Jason then. The way he sat straight up. The way light flooded him and his eyes brimmed with wonder and laughter. The way joy returned after years of exile, sudden and quiet and fleet. The way his face, scowling ugly a moment before, a bitter old man’s face, turned youthful and hopeful. Jason was like a soldier standing in the soft glow of daybreak after a night of death raining down from the sky, astonished and thankful to be alive.

  Yet I never changed one thing about Jason’s circumstances. I never altered a single detail of his life.

  The only thing I changed was his mind.

  That day, it was enough to change everything.

  Often we get this backward. We won’t change our minds, won’t revise our attitudes, until someone—God, a parent, a boss, a spouse, a child, a coworker—changes our circumstances. We refuse to budge until so
meone moves a mountain. Our lives shuttle between an alteration of if only, what if, and as soon as: If only I had more money. As soon as I get a different job. What if my husband loved me more? If only my child wasn’t rebellious. . . . As soon as . . . What if . . .

  But this is not how God works.

  This is: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind ”; “Be made new in the attitude of your minds” (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:23, emphasis mine).

  Under God’s economy, nothing really changes until our minds do. Transformation is the fruit of a changed outlook. First our minds are renewed, and then we are transformed, and then everything is different, even if it stays the same.

  God is more interested in changing your thinking than in changing your circumstances. He wants you to have the same attitude as and the very mind of Jesus Christ (see Phil. 2:5–8). To pull that off is a miracle larger than splitting oceans or tossing mountains into them. It is akin to raising the dead. Yet this is the daily occupation of the Spirit—leading us into all truth, reminding us of the things Christ taught, taking the things of Christ and making them known to us again. And this is the one area above all where we are urged to keep in step with the Spirit—to move in the direction he’s moving so that, seeing differently, we are free to live differently (see Gal. 5:22–25).

  All this touches on the art of Sabbath-keeping. What makes Sabbath time—whether a day or a year, an afternoon or a week, a month or a moment—different from all other time? Simple: a shift in our thinking, an altering of our attitudes.

  First we change our minds. Before we keep a Sabbath day, we cultivate a Sabbath heart.

  A Sabbath heart sanctifies time. This is not a ritual. It’s a perspective. And it’s not a shift in circumstances—you still have the same job tomorrow, the same problems with your aging parents or wayward children, the same battle looming in the church. But you make a deliberate choice to shift point of view, to come at your circumstances from a fresh angle and with greater depth of field. You choose to see your life otherwise, through a different lens, from a different standpoint, with a different mind-set.