When you meet someone for the first time, you start with name and maybe where you’re from. How many questions does it take before the question is posed, “So, what do you do?”

To what extent does our work define us? People may measure our worth, to some extent, by our job. You may find your identity in work. Then who are you when you’re not working? When you’re retired?

Why do we work? Certainly, money has a lot to do with it. But that can’t be the only goal. I read this recently: “After forty years of hard work, Smith retired with a comfortable fortune of $90,000 which he had gained through courage, diligence, initiative, skill, devotion to duty, thrift, efficiency, shrewd investment, and the death of an uncle who left him $89,999.50.”

We insist on working. Visit any country, any culture, and you find people working. They’re finding something that keeps them busy around the house or in an office or out on the field. Some work harder and longer, but everybody works.

For many of us, work is exciting, rewarding, fun. Our work can also be drudgery, aggravation, conflict. That’s true of any job. The best job has its negative aspects and the worst job usually has a few rewards.

God created us to work. The Wisdom writer of Ecclesiastes came to this conclusion: “So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God.” – Ecclesiastes 2:24

Is your job a gift from God? Are you finding satisfaction in your work? How can we make our work work for us? Those are the issues we’ll be looking at in September at First Presbyterian Church of Petaluma.

God’s Grace and Peace.

Dave Weidlich