Moses and Work

In Exodus the work started on the tabenacle. Moses called the people to work based on whom the Spirit has filled with skill.

Then Moses said to the people of Israel, "See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he ahs filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs to work in gold and silver and bronze," Exodus 35:30-33

And again in Exodus 36:2

And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work. (ESV)

God is a god of quality. God expects good work from his people and good work honors God. Furthermore, the skills of craftsmen and construction are not usually considered skills for worship, but obviously these men in working on the temple, worshipped God. I usually don't advocate vocation, but the way God called and equipped these men for the work, may make me reconsider my views.

James Van Allen and Work

The Des Moines Register honoring Dr. Van Allen after his death in 2006, quoted a colleague:

"His idea of a big time is to go into his labs and just work through the weekend," said one of his associates in the 1980s.

At the memorial service, his colleagues and family indicated that he loved research. He would keep a tight schedule. Monday through Saturday, Dr. Van Allen would leave the house for work at 7:45 a.m. and come home for dinner at 6:30 p.m. He would eat dinner with his family and then go to his office to work the rest of the evening. On Sunday mornings he would cook waffles for his family and then leave to work 1/2 day or more.

I have never met such a discipline man before.

Hawthorne, Work and Angels

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about a person who worked and did not experience toil. Phoebe worked as if she was an angel who was not touch by the curse of Adam.

There was a spiritual quality in Phoebe's activity. The life of the long and busy day--spent in occupations that might so easily have taken a squalid and ugly aspect--had been made pleasant, and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with which these homely duties seemed to bloom out of her character; so that labor, while she dealt with it, had the easy and flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil, but let their good works grow out of them; and so did Phoebe.

The House of the Seven Gables. Chapter 5.

The Prophets and Work

Sometimes, God uses the decrease production relative to amount of toil to get a person's or a people's attention. See Haggai 3:15-17

Now then, consider from this day onward. Before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the Lord, how did you fare? When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were but twenty. I struck you and all the products of your toil with blight and mildew and with hail, yet you did not run to me, declares the Lord.

ESV

C. S. Lewis and Work

Leland Ryken writes of Lewis writing about Tyndale.

The wonderful, beautiful integration of Tyndale's world. He utterly denies the medieval distinction between religion and secular life

p. 208 Worldly Saints Ryken footnotes Lewis's English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama

In the same paragraph Ryken writes,

Someone else has said that "the Puritan was determined to make earthly things divine, not by forbidding them, but by infusing them with holines."