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I’m glad we honor laborers in this country…all laborers. As I’ve written before, work is a good thing. People showing up every day, carrying out their duties, is a real service to all of us. I love what Dr. Louis Profeta wrote a couple years ago in which he was trying to make a case to fellow medical professionals that all work is important and all workers are important:

We are just one profession out of countless others that keep our world moving. We are no more heroes than the social worker visiting homes in the projects, the farmer up at 4 to feed the cattle, the ironworker strapped to a beam on the 50th floor. We are no more a hero than the single mom working overnight as a custodian, trying to feed her kids. We are no more heroic than countless others who work in jobs they perhaps hate in order to care for and support the people they love. (You can read the entire article here.)

Martin Luther King, Jr., had the same sentiment:

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

We “commissioned” people at church yesterday: commissioned them to do their jobs–all kinds of jobs–and to remember as I’ve written before, that they serve by their work, they serve at their work, and they advance the Kingdom from their work.

I was privileged to take part, and I pointed out a few important Bible characters who had “regular” jobs. As our pastor says from time to time, “These stories didn’t happen in church! They happened out in the real world.”

• Noah: shipbuilder!
• Abraham, Isaac, Jacob: herdsmen (in Colorado: ranchers!)
• Joseph and Daniel: prime ministers of foreign countries
• Joshua: military general
• Deborah: federal judge (Judges 4.4)
• Boaz, great-grandfather of King David: a farmer (read Ruth)
• David: military man, king, poet, musician
• Amos: a tree surgeon! (Amos 7.14)
• Joseph and Jesus: carpenters (Matthew 13.55, Mark 6.3)
• First worshippers of Jesus: wise men (astronomers?) (Matthew 2)
• First documented Gentile convert: a Roman centurion (Acts 10)
• First convert in Greece: Lydia: a merchant (Acts 16)
• Priscilla and Aquilla: made portable housing (Acts 18)

The shepherds in Luke 2 were working when the angels appeared to them, and they returned to work after visiting the manger.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (Genesis 2.15, NIV)

Six days you shall labor and do all your work. (Exodus 20.9, NIV)

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Colossians 3.23, 24, NIV)