Reflections on Marriage: W is for Work
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Work
Work
is the fire
that ignites marriage
with warmth, light,
and security, for
the daily toil
of your willing
hands and minds
earns great rewards
and keeps love’s
flame burning brightly.
Excerpt from ABC’s for a Happy Marriage:
A Collection of Original Poetry and Biblical Scriptures
As you reflect on your own attitudes towards work, try to remember when these attitudes were first instilled in you. If you have a negative attitude, ask yourself what experiences caused these thoughts and feelings in the first place. If you have positive thoughts and feelings about work, ask yourself which people inspired you to cheerfully embrace the nobility of work. A negative attitude can be changed to a positive attitude as you look for role models, either in real life or in books, who can help you transform yourself and find the true joy of work. Leave the past in the past. You can start fresh!
I hope you will enjoy reading this excerpt that was written in 1982 by J. Richard Clark entitled, “The Value of Work.” I believe it is of even greater importance today than it was when it was written nearly forty years ago.
The Value of Work
Work is honorable. It is good therapy for most problems. It is the antidote for worry. It is the equalizer for deficiency of native endowment. Work makes it possible for the average to approach genius. What we may lack in aptitude, we can make up for in performance.
James A. Michener was raised in poverty by a widowed mother. From age eleven, James worked six days a week every summer and delivered papers during the winter. At age fourteen he apprenticed as a plumber and worked fourteen hours a day in the summer and four hours a day in the winter. In looking back he says,
“Instead of turning me against work,
this ingrained in me the attitude that sensible people
work hard to attain sensible goals—
a philosophy I still adhere to.
”
Work is a blessing from God. … We are co-creators with God. He gave us the capacity to do the work he left undone, to harness the energy, mine the ore, transform the treasures of the earth for our good. But most important, the Lord knew that from the crucible of work emerges the hard core of character.
Let me suggest some other elements of the work ethic which are important:
We must perform high-quality work. It is a matter of integrity. Every piece of work we do is a portrait of the one who produced it.
Let us give full, honest effort to our jobs as though we owned the enterprise. In a very real sense, each of us is in business for ourselves, no matter who pays us.
Continue to invest in your personal development. Expand your occupational horizons by constant study. Use your spare time wisely. … I like what one businessman counseled: “If at first you do succeed, try something harder!”
To teach our children to work is a primary duty of parenthood. … If we are to save our children temporally and spiritually, we must train them to work. They must learn by example that work is not drudgery, but a blessing.
In the broader sense, work is the means to achieve happiness, prosperity, and salvation. When work and duty and joy are commingled, then man is at his best. Tagore wrote:
I slept and dreamt
That life was joy
I woke and saw
That life was duty*
I acted, And behold!
Duty was joy!
Work was instituted from the beginning as the means by which the children of God were to fulfill their earthly stewardship. Work is our divine heritage.
Research Notes
James A. Michener was an American author who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948. Rabindranath Tagore was a Nobel Prize-winning poet from India in 1913.
*Duty (dharma) was the word used in this poem originally. This poem has also been quoted with the word “service” replacing the word “duty.”
I slept and dreamt
That life was joy
I woke and saw
That life was service
I acted, And behold!
Service was joy!