By Jonathan Rogers, reprinted from “The Habit,” his weekly newsletter about writing. To subscribe, click here. When I was growing up in Warner Robins, Georgia, there was a subdivision called “Leisure World.” It wasn’t a retirement community or a neighborhood of vacation homes. It was just a place where people lived with their families. Best I could tell, most of…
By David Williamson, part five of a series. The revised script, the new drama of life post-Genesis 3, starts to be played out. Chapter 4 of Genesis begins with a comforting and hopeful statement: In spite of sin and God’s judgement, God’s grace enables Eve to bear a child. Indeed, all work, all labor, all production should be with the understanding…
By Luke Bolton, reprinted from Faith Driven Entrepreneur. Over the years I have enjoyed many jobs, from trim carpentry and truck driving to university teaching and financial services. With a passion to serve God, I finished degrees in theology – but did not enter church ministry as a full-time job. In God’s plan, my theological education has been woven into…
By David Williamson, part four of a series. We are now somewhere in the middle of a deadly world-wide virus – a pandemic. As I read Genesis 3, I am aware that Genesis 3 introduces a deadly virus into the high view of work introduced in Genesis 1 and 2. Unfortunately, much of what people experience in their work, “reality now”…
By David Williamson, part three of a series. There are several nudges or suggestions in the early chapters of Genesis that work is done in the context of teams. No grand, rugged individualism, independence or autonomy here! The need for teamwork is most directly stated in Genesis 2:5: “There was no one to till the ground.” In this second account of…
Reprinted from the Chalmers Center. The new year is upon us, and after the long, painful year we have just been through, the traditional resolutions, hopes, and dreams might take on extra significance for many of us in 2021. Perhaps you and your church or ministry are thinking of how to improve your work and witness in the coming year.…
Reprinted from the Salt & Light Australia Daily Devotional. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to live wholeheartedly for God, particularly considering the Hebrew word tamim. Integrity points to the core of what it means to be integral, to be whole-hearted. It is being honest and truthful in word and action and thought. It refers to consistency in…
By David Williamson, part two of a series. As Genesis 1 proceeds, God continues to form the earth-substance out of nothing, and we see new and expanding products and possibilities. God takes on additional work – new, specific forms of work. God continue to create – indeed, to innovate – and various forms of material, such as vegetation, come into…
Reprinted from the Salt & Light Australia Daily Devotional. In the current uncertain climate, some of our ideas about work are being challenged, as the place of work for some gets relocated temporarily to home. It is a good opportunity to reconsider the place of work in our lives. Derek Thompson, writing in The Atlantic, has warned that work has become a…
By David Williamson, part one of a series. From the beginning, at the dawn of history, men and women are called first into a relationship with God. Then, secondly, they are called to participate with God in exercising “dominion” – managing, shaping, designing and developing the world that God has created and entrusted to humans. The creator God is an…
