Why Should We Work?

There is in most of us at times a tendency not to do anything that is difficult to do, not to perform any unpleasant service or engage in any inconvenient activity. The tendency is often more apparent in our younger years when we haven’t yet had to learn some things which later in life we find that we must learn.

In every family, in every household, in every business and community and country, there are difficult, tiresome, tedious things to do⎯and some one has to do them. But sometimes young people grow up expecting everything to be placed before them, and sometimes they ask: “Why should we work?” “Why should we do anything we don’t want to do?” “Why should we spend any part of our precious days doing difficult things when there are easier and more pleasant pastimes?”

There are many answers to this kind of questioning. One that suggests itself is this: It was a wise and loving Father who gave us work to do, a Father who knows our needs and who holds our happiness close to His heart. (Not that work doesn’t become monotonous at times. Anything can become monotonous. Even so-called play or pleasure can become monotonous. And above all, idleness can become monotonous. But it wasn’t intended that any of us should live effortlessly or follow our own irresponsible pleasure. The Lord God made that clear when our first parents were sent out from the Garden of Eden.)

Work is one of the greatest gifts that God has given: not just the labor required for actual existence (even the dumb beasts do what they are made to do or must do for sheer sustenance), but work done beyond sheer necessity, work and effort for the opportunity to learn, for the power to improve, for the satisfaction of serving, of creating, of doing, of discovering.

One of the greatest lessons of life is to learn to find joy in doing things we ought to want to do, even when we don’t want to do them; for any day is a disappointing day if it is allowed to pass without some sincere sense of accomplishment.