“…and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you…” ~ 1 Thess. 4:11
We are trained by our culture that we work in order to get something else. We work for the purpose of being able to afford rest.
This view of the world is incredibly broken, and it leads to a culture that idolizes rest. Vacations, breaks, time off, and maintaining are all important and good things. But the culture around us has made these things something to be pursued, and even at times, demanded.
In fact, the great ambition of our culture is to work hard enough, or earn enough to stop working.
Paul, on the other hand, appealed to the church in Thessalonica with a very different ambition. He instructed the church to aim at a quiet and humble life that was filled with work. The work was the ambition, so that there would be no needs.
Paul wasn’t condemning retirement or rest. He was showing the blessing of work.
Man was designed by God to work—Adam had responsibilities in the Garden of Eden. The pollution of sin tainted work, and made it hard, but didn’t remove the blessing of God upon it.
While rest, relaxation, and breaks are important, we need to guard our hearts against idolizing these things. God has designed us to be working beings, and we can aim to rejoice in our work for His glory!
God’s blessing and smiles are upon our vocation just as much as they are upon our vacation.
