[ takin' care of business ]

I'm a waitress at Cracker Barrel, and this week, I've been working day shifts -- 8 am-4 pm, 9-4, etc. This week's schedule surprised me because I had been clocking in evening hours for the last few weeks, but it's been good: the other servers are great, time goes by crazy-quickly & the management is solid. I have about a million reasons to be grateful for the job.

Okay, so this is the last time I'll reference To Own a Dragon for awhile. This has been on my mind for the last two or three days. When I first read this, I thought something like, Okay, that makes sense, and sort of just moved on without trying to soak it in or think about how it applies to life or something like that.

A few pages later: Oh, man. I need to re-read that.

Okay, so a quick recap:

• Miller and MacMurray (photographer friend and mentor) take an evening hike to a smaller mountain near Mount Adams in hopes of catching a good shot of the mountain at sunset. Quite a climb, apparently.
  
• After reaching a certain point, they stop. Miller catches his breath; MacMurray sets up the tripod.
• After a few minutes of hesitation, Miller realizes that MacMurray isn't going to take a single photo: "Don, there are a million shots like this. Anybody could hike up here on any day and take this shot. We're looking for something more exceptional."
• No photos taken despite a beautiful evening: "The light isn't right."
• Miller asks MacMurray how often he awakes early, makes an extra effort or hikes ten or more miles only to turn around without a single shot. "It happens a great deal...I will use about 10 percent of the shots I take."
• "How do you do it, John? I mean, how do you get out of bed at four in the morning and hike up into the mountains for days without knowing you are going to get a shot. Doesn't that drive you nuts, knowing the chances of your getting a good picture are so low?" -Miller (So straightforward.)
• "It's not about what you don't get done; it's about what you do get done. The price of one good shot is nine other hikes, nine other times I have to get out of bed. That's the cost of a great moment." -MacMurray

Here's a few big ideas in the chapter that got me thinking:

1. Work is about God.
2. Work isn't punishment; it's reward.
3. "God is the only motivation...where the law of diminishing returns doesn't apply. I get joy in knowing Him, and He makes sense of my life, my family, my money, my work. And work is just a tool. It is the means to a good end, not the end itself." -JM
   
4. "Work, the idea of work, is God's invention and it's part of our spirituality to do it." -JM
5. Work is an act of worship: "It gives us a reason for doing what it is we do, beyond even feeding our families. It is bigger than that." -JM

***

Maybe you've read (memorized, even?) Colossians 3:17 --

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

I don't know a ton about the context of Colossians (check back in 8ish weeks after I finish studying Philippians & Colossians) -- okay, not much at all-- but that verse has always sort of 'resounded' with me. Honestly, it was probably because I flipped through a subsection of a "Bible Promises" verse-finder paperback (did anyone else receive about a dozen of those for graduation?) entitled "Servanthood" or something like that.

Anyway, Miller's own chapter on work had to just 'linger' for awhile, because I wasn't quite sure how to take it.

This summer, I've approached work with a few goals of sorts -- engage others in friendship, share the gospel, trust God for conversations, and well, make some money for Fall 2006 tuition. Here's the weird thing, though: those are all an overflow of labor that...

• Worships and honors God
• Is built into our very existence
• Is a reward (still a very crazy concept) for us
• Reflects God's workmanship in Creation & through Christ

***

There's a really strange part of me that likes the concept of 'work' -- not just in a career or rollin'-in-the-dough sense -- and not even as a service-as-a-love-language, either.

Let's see, here...

Because God has uniquely crafted each one of us (inactivity & stagnancy aren't really characteristics of God -- I mean, we pray for things like movement, for God to work, etc., etc.), it seems like there's something kind of engrained in us to worship our Creator through our work, whatever form that may take.

***

God is working through all of us in a lot of different ways, of course, and a lot of cool things tend to emerge as we trust God in the midst of our labor: people coming to know the Lord, darkness exposed by the light of Christ, personal growth in our relationship with God.

All those really good -- I mean, really, really good -- things that we pray for, however, must first spring from a whole giving-over: heart, mind, body -- to our Maker, worthy of our worship and thanks in whatever we do.

Take care!

-Jessie