2531AFC080125 – Working on a living ← PODCAST LINK 🙂
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Ecclesiastes 2:22-23 – 22 What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? 23 For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.
Psalm 90:17 –
17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and prosper for us the work of our hands—
O prosper the work of our hands!
Colossians 3:5-10 – (GNT) [1] 5 You must put to death, then, the earthly desires at work in you, such as sexual immorality, indecency, lust, evil passions, and greed (for greed is a form of idolatry). 6 Because of such things God’s anger will come upon those who do not obey him 7 At one time you yourselves used to live according to such desires, when your life was dominated by them.
8 But now you must get rid of all these things: anger, passion, and hateful feelings. No insults or obscene talk must ever come from your lips. 9 Do not lie to one another, for you have put off the old self with its habits 10 and have put on the new self. This is the new being which God, its Creator, is constantly renewing in his own image, in order to bring you to a full knowledge of himself.
Luke 12:18-21 – 18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! May Peace always be with you and may God bless you, Belovéd! A little housekeeping at the start. Wednesday, July 29th, we had a “non-event” Big Day In The Ocean. An earthquake of magnitude 8.8 – which is a whopper – stirred up a tsunami wave which eventually reached Kauaʻi and all the rest of the Hawaiʻian Islands, as well as the Left Coast of the Continent. The bottom line is, we’re OK here. No big whup. There are currents to deal with as an aftermath, and that caused some jostling that continued into Thursday. Crucita, Timothy, and I had nothing to worry about, regardless, because we are living well above the inundation zone. We appreciate the prayers for all the persons impacted, especially those where the wave arrived more forcefully. Now, on to the work at hand.
I think we’ll take them in order today so Ecclesiastes first. It seems this guy, Qoheleth (קֹהֶלֶת) (ko-HEL-eth) ,who is the preacher, teacher, philosopher, sage, wiseman, and so forth is the alleged writer of this book. We’re not exactly positive who wrote this collection, and I suppose we could speculate is was “done in committee,” but we have a vague notion who it might have been. He introduces himself as Son of David, king in Jerusalem, so it seems it might be (might as well be) Solomon (shel-o-moh) the third king of Israel. He also gets credit for the Books of Proverbs and Song of Songs; these three together are grouped as the “Wisdom Literature of Solomon.” The Book of Wisdom has a pseudepigraphical attribution to Solomon, but that is just a slick way to fluff up the credibility of the author(s) who were putting it together as a sort of indoctrination document to distract young Jewish males from the influences of Hellenism in First-Century Alexandria.
Qoheleth spends pages and pages lamenting the worthlessness of just about every human enterprise. The most-readily recognized passage, thanks to the Byrds (↔ Music Link), is chapter 3 “For everything there is a season …” so, by this point in his tome he is saying that the reason we all toil and trouble is because God has chosen things for us to do that keep us busy. In Ecclesiastes 3:14-15 (GNT) 1 he says, 14 I know that everything God does will last forever. You can’t add anything to it or take anything away from it. And one thing God does is to make us stand in awe of him. 15 Whatever happens or can happen has already happened before. God makes the same thing happen again and again. This is not a proposition of reincarnation, but perhaps a rather lyrical way to signify the timelessness of God for whom all Times and Seasons are one instance. All the work we do for the sake of work is pointless work. All the work we do for the Glory of God is Godly work, and that is work that is worthwhile and productive because it fulfills the purpose of our creation. Some of us will remember this:
- Q: Why did God make you?
- A: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.
Ecclesiastes encourages us to see – that apart from knowing, loving, and serving God – pretty much everything else is useless so we might as well enjoy our lives and loves which are a gift to us from God so we can know, love, and serve him. Yep. He does that over, and over, and over and … ! Get it? Got it! Good!!
Now then, knowing that, we can see that Solomon’s Pappy – King David – was right on target when he said, Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands. Work done outside of God’s favor and blessing does not prosper. Oh, some folks might get rich at it, but their lives are empty. Look to Hollywood or politics for evidence of that. Or even just look at the schlemiel in our Gospel reading. He’s a rich guy who got richer (and the implication is that it was God’s doing, not his) and so he decides to pack away his good fortune by tearing down his own barns and silos and building bigger ones. Just like that, he goes from schlemiel to schlimazel because he’s dead before that project ever gets started. The point in Jesus’ parable about the Rich Fool is that being wise about your earthly holdings is of small consolation when it comes to your Treasures in Heaven. Like they say, “You can’t take it with you.” When we ask God to “prosper the work of our hands,” it is for the purpose of HIS Glory, not ours. It should always be that when others see the magnitude and diversity of God’s Blessings, Gifts, and MERCIES in our lives, they should see it as God’s doings, not ours. Most of us would have to confess that we don’t always get that right in our day-to-day living.
OK, I took that out of order for a reason, because we’ve decided to finish up with the Key Verse from Colossians. This is one scalding scolding! The Apostle Paul lists a bunch of things we must, must, lay aside because we are “a new creation” through the New Covenant in Blood established by Jesus. I’ve inserted some explications in the following excerpt:
The Apostle Paul lists: sexual immorality, indecency [immodest dressing, sexually suggestive actions], lust [Disordered selfish desire focused on the creation, not the Creator], evil passions [cherished infatuations], and greed [the idolatry of desires]; anger [impulsive, indignant punishment], passion [nurtured wrath], and hateful feelings [heaping wickedness and worry on others]. No insults [“trash talk,” gossip] or obscene talk [filthy speech or, worse, blasphemy] must ever come from your lips. 9 Do not lie to one another.
All of us, sometime, somewhere, have notched one or two of these into our belts.
Thankfully, we have a superlative way to deal with that fact: God’s Perfect Integrity, Endless Mercy, Everlasting Love, And Eternal Salvation as part of his Absolutely Perfect Plan. We might be tempted to ask, “Why does God make the same thing happen again and again; or God seeks out what has gone by; or God requireth that which is past; or God restores what has passed away. (←Look it up here.) Could it possibly be that we are negligent, unfocused, inattentive servants who learn obedience and then promptly and completely forget it again and again? The B.I.B.L.E. tells us repeatedly that is the case. It also tells us God notes our sin and then promptly and completely forgets it. That is, when we confess our sins, admit we were, are, and will be wrong, and seek and accept his forgiveness. Anything else, adelphos, is indeed a vanity of vanities.
If we are actually working on a living, it’s best not to put all our thought and energy into working on a living here! We need to be working on a living There. Here are a couple of wise words for our work in this life. First from Matthew 6:19-21 – 19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven (↔ Music Link), where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” We can see that working on a living is a HEART thing. Here’s how The Apostle Paul amplifies that in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 – 7 But we have this treasure in clay jars (↔ Music Link), so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. Now that’s the way to work on a living by Living a Life in Christ! (←Learn more here. I use it every day!)
The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In such a life there is not vanity or loss, but only humility and eternal J.O.Y.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Biblical languages inserts from Bible Hub (Bible Hub: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages) Visit at http://biblehub.com
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
[1]Passages marked (GNT): Good News Translation (GNT) are from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition)© 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.
