I always enjoy writing for Labor Day because I value work in its myriad forms.

Here’s something I heard the late economist Walter Williams share on the radio. He said:

You go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of bananas. How many people did it take to get those bananas from, say, Brazil to your grocery store?

Think about it…

People called in with various guesses. I remember someone saying, “Twelve.” Nope…

Finally, someone said, “Thousands,” and Walter Williams said, “I’ll give you credit…

It’s MILLIONS.

He explained:

Someone had to plant the trees the bananas came from and tend them. Someone had to pick them. Someone had to make the box they put them in. They no doubt rode in a truck to the shipping dock. Someone had to make the truck…and the tires for the truck. Someone had to drive the truck. Someone had to build the road. The bananas were loaded onto a ship. Someone had to make the ship. The people who built the ship no doubt wore shoes. Someone had to make the shoes…and on it goes.

Millions of people so you could go to the store built by workers and staffed by workers. You drove over there in a car built by workers.

Praise God for the miracle of work. The Bible opens with God…at work.

Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (Genesis 1.31 – 2.3, NKJV, emphasis mine)