How We Work

This we have said: that work should be more than merely motions; more than for money; it should also be moral⎯and since it is the expenditure of life itself, it should provide not only essential material substance, but also satisfaction and a real sense of service.

Now to the question of how we work: Work should be pursued if possible in an atmosphere of orderliness. We could scarcely imagine the Creator at work under distracting pressure or in other than orderliness. Nor can we believe that He would be hasty or harried or shoddy in His work⎯or do less than needed to be done, or fail to follow through. As the Father Himself set the example, so it was that His Son could say, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”

From another source we cite: “It was a blessing and not a curse; it was in mercy and not in wrath that man was commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his face….[work] is the fountain of all wealth, and of all happiness. Nations and individuals are alike utterly and entirely dependent upon it…. [In work] the destinies of the world are determined….”

The world needs the best effort of us all, and every person who does worthy, useful work, plays an important part⎯whether it is the doing of a household chore or the teaching of a child; the sewing of a button, or the building of a building.

People call us by the work we do. We are identified by the occupation or profession in which we are employed⎯and each person is entitled to the dignity, the pride, the honor of work, to a choice in his work, to the profit of work, to the worthiness, the orderliness, the artistry of work, and to a sense of service and sincere satisfaction⎯without too much pressure, but not too leisurely, not loafing, not holding back, not fearful of doing too much, not failing to give fair and full time. As someone pays for every hour, so is he entitled to fair effort and to a fair return.

As Ruskin wrote: “…work is only done well when it is done with a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he is doing what he should, and is in his place….not in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered…way…. Work is a thing done because it ought to be done, and with a determined end.”

“…men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will,…”⎯including good and worthwhile work.