Your Job Is a Parable

I was behind the door when they were handing out some skills. Numbers often betray me, and hand tools don’t always cooperate as they should. Policies and procedures are, in my estimation, a necessary evil.

But I love words: I love to read, study, and write. I once spent five weeks researching and writing a 40-page paper with a bibliography that ran over two pages. I devoted the entire paper to an examination of four words in Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia: “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16).

Most people cringe at the thought of that kind of labor. Why was that enormous project such a delight for me? Because of my wiring, the gifts and passions God wove into my make-up by His own design.

My wife is the daughter of a man who spent his entire career working with lumber and construction materials. He built two of the houses she grew up in, he helped us add onto our house twice, and he worked for five decades as a lumber yard foreman at the old Wagner Wood Lumber Company on Dorothy Lane. The man had sawdust in his veins.

My wife is her father’s daughter. She once asked for (and received) a band-saw for Christmas. Obviously, with my lack of prowess with tools and her gifts and passions, she is the handy one in our household.

All this to state the obvious: God has created a dazzling array of gifts in His people. You can see this vast array both in our natural gifts and the spiritual gifts we are given for service.

I recently came across a book that takes an intriguing approach to this matter of gifting and vocation. John Van Sloten’s new book Every Job a Parable: What WalMart Greeters, Nurses, and Astronauts Tell Us About God is built on the thesis that every job contains a tiny expression, a “parable” that reveals something of the nature of our working God.

Van Sloten, a pastor in Calgary, Aberta, Canada, uses the familiar expression “love language” to explain:

“Each of us has a vocational love language with which we best relate to God at work.
“God gave us this language because he loves us and wants to know us personally. Because his love is universal and unlimited, God connects with each person wherever they are, via a language that is best for them.
 
“God speaks your language. . . your vocational love language.
 
“The God of all creation speaks physics, chemistry, and biology; prose, poetry, and computer programming; leadership, organizational behavior, and accounting; planning, serving, and cleaning; and creativity, shape, and color.

“God speaks all of these languages and more. Often he speaks them through you in a way that resonates and feels natural. This way is your vocational love language: a way of operating that connects with God’s way of operating, a unique way in which you image a working God.”

What a fascinating way to think about our work! Every vocation is a tiny sliver, a micro-cosmic expression of the way God works: we organize, we create, we communicate, we solve problems, we repair and restore. In myriad ways each of us reflects something of the way God works in His world. Each of us, made in the image of God, is a tiny mirror reflecting the glory of His ceaseless activity in the world He made!

I have long believed that the kindest thing we can do for our neighbors and co-workers who are far from God is let them see what a Christ follower actually looks like. The most obvious way we can do this is to let them see what Christ-like character looks like and how, when we fail, the gospel helps us deal with our failure and brokenness in grace.

But Van Sloten has encouraged me to see that our witness at work goes beyond the obvious: it’s not just God’s work in my character but also my gifts, skills, and passions that are a reflection of God.

When my friend repairs a leak in the roof, that leak is fixed. His skill in roof repair gives me a glimpse into the way God restores what is broken in lives and marriages.

When an accountant makes sense of a flood of numbers and can create a picture that makes sense to numbers-phobic people like me, that is a tiny picture of God communicating vast truth to finite minds.

When the custodian cleans and straightens, we see a picture of the work God does in making something beautiful out of what was in disarray.

Every honorable profession reflects something of what God is doing in the world. Take that mindset to work, and take a Colossians 3 approach to the work God has given you to do: 

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

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3:17, 23-24, ESV)

There will not be a new edition of Discipleship Weekly next week. Enjoy a restful thanksgiving with your family. 
 

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor