17 And he said to the man, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘Do not eat from it’:
The ground is cursed because of you.
You will eat from it by means of painful labor[a]
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field. (Genesis 3:17-18 CSB)
My pastor is preaching a series out of Genesis right now and this portion of scripture jumped out at me. We tend to forget that we are still living under Adam’s curse. We want to focus, and in many ways we should, only upon Christ salvation. But we need to remain aware of living, until He takes us home, in a fallen world.
We want to focus upon doing something we love in our work, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, we need to keep in mind, when even the best jobs get difficult and we run into troubles, it will produce thorns and thistles at times for us. That is part of Adam’s curse.
I think we all strive for and work toward the best work situation we can find. Work makes up a big part of our lives and we often start looking toward a time of rest in retirement. However, the Bible does not really speak of retirement. It speaks of working for the Lord with great joy.
We can work with great joy, even when it gets tough. Yes, we may get tired and feel stretched thin at times. Work can become so busy that there is not time for much of anything else. This is when we must turn all of our work over to God and let Him work out the details.
How much better to simply accept that the thorns and thistles are a part of our work lives. However, when we do our jobs with great joy people will recognize God working through us.
