The Narrative of Work
First: What is work?
Like sheets of plywood, our lives’ have many layers. Vocation is one layer among many. Other layers like hobbies, family, community, etc., all join together to provide strength, form and beauty to our work.
That’s right… vocation is part (one layer) of work. It might be on a roof, in an office, with a griddle, or in the carpool line. All the variant ways you steward your time is called work. However, we must resist calling faith a layer. Rather, faith is the binding agent holding these elements in form.
While the wood layers are visible, the strength to endure utility, turbulence and time comes from the glue. The same is true for our lives. The story of faith becomes visible through our practice of vocation, community, family and the whole scope of life.
Second: What is the “narrative of work”?
The “narrative of work” is how our life is contextualized within the greater story of faith. Just as the plywood (above illustration) is transformed into a chess board, boat, or home, so our work is transformed by faith.
There will always be seasons of plenty and want that obscure work’s value. “Narrative” provides purpose and mission by answering the big questions of “who, what, when, where, why, and how”. “Narrative” brings an external truth to our daily complexities and produces joy, peace, and assurance.
Example: While we aim for excellence, in Christ we are freed to enter broken systems as broken people. Our greater story mobilizes us as ambassadors of an eternal hope. (Colossians 1:27 Christ in you, the hope of glory.)
Each one of us is called to tell a story (narrative) through work that glorifies God and blesses others. We are stewards and nothing is wasted in God’s economy. While we abhor being chopped, cut and hammered, living for story (narrative) teaches us that the value of life is not measured by what has been removed, but by Who is forming us. And He is faithful to complete the forming.
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
Are you living an interwoven life? Have you tried to delaminate faith from vocation or rest?
(Note: these “layers” are concepts. Meaning, your job is not permanently glued to you, but using talent for the life of the world is.)