"Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.” 

- Colossians 3:23

The common concept of work is in terms of pay, salary or monetary profit. It is often in terms of temporal gains. Of course, work is the primary means by man earns his keep. Yet, there is much more in it than earning a living. There is something in work which makes man like God. There must be something in it which is more than mere grind or sweat. 

There is nothing as absurd in the meaningless toil, haphazard & random labor. While we are ordained to work in providing subsistence, moreso to sustain our aspiration for individual progress & the quest for the noblest purpose in life.

Work has been taken as too much of a burden since the fall of mankind from Divine grace when God, the Almighty Creator, destined man to work;  “By the sweat of your face,” God said to Adam, “shall you get bread to eat until you return to the ground from which you are made.” (Genesis 3:19)

Indeed, work without the creating & liberating element is unpleasant, drab & perhaps depersonalizing. None of us will remain human if we are either treated no more than an element of production or the extension of the machine we uses. And no human being would appreciate & enjoy work if his attitude towards it is reduced to what he gets from it.

From the beginning, work was supposed to be liberating, creative activity through which man found joy in being God's co-creator, until sin disrupted this order. Man afterall was appointed by God to have authority of all creation, having the capacity to subdue the earth & exercise “dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on earth.” (Genesis 1:26 – 28)

It is our fervent prayer, for the time to come when each of us would no longer be driven by greed and lust for possessions when we do work. Perhaps we would come to realize to see our respective jobs or business, as not just a manner of earning money, to be rich or amass wordly power, but as an affirmation of our dignity as stewards of the earth, to serve one another as Jesus Christ, Who labored the hardest to gain for us eternal salvation.

Dan Quetulio Brizuela 

Holy Week 2024