Important Work

Before you rests a pile of dark, heavy dirt. You sigh, looking from it to the shovel with a split wooden handle grasped in your hand. You know your task.

Slowly, you jab your shovel into the dirt. When you remove it, you deposit the part that doesn't fall off into a new pile. Complaining of the crack pinching your palm, you press on, knowing your duty.

You know you need to move this dirt. But you don't know why. So you toil on.

But then Joe bounds towards you. "Hurry up!" he cries, jabbing his thin trowel into the pile. "Come on!" In a few moments, with his small tool he has doubled the pile you've been toiling over.

Raising your eyebrows, you press your shovel into the dirt. "What's the hurry?" you ask.

"What's the hurry?!" Joe cries, without turning from his work. "Don't you know he'll suffocate if we don't get him out?"

Suddenly, you don't notice the pinching on your palms, the weight of the dirt, the sweat marking trails down your neck.

Your only focus is to get him out. To save his life.

Now, the obstacles don't matter. You only wish you had known before the importance of the task, that you might have done better. Why hadn't someone told you? Why hadn't you realized, so that you would have known to work diligently?

I think this is often how we approach all of life. There is gravity and purpose for our lives -- but we live as if we know we need to live but don't know why. We grow weary living, we act lackadaisical, we live without a plan:

We don't remember that there is a reason we are living.

But there is.

Ephesians 2:10: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Revelation 4:11: You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created.

If we remembered this, could we live lives of such unintentionality? If we really believe that Christ gives  meaning to life, that God sees all that we do, why do we think it doesn't matter?

And if we know that what we do with our lives is important, why don't we act like it?

 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. ...Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.   I Corinthians 9:24-27