To Read or To Work?

…and aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you…1 Thessalonians 4:11

It used to infuriate me that I could be cleaning, preparing meals, or doing laundry while my husband sat and read. In my mind (and upbringing) reading wasn’t “busy,” reading was a leisure activity. He would argue that he was busy when he was reading.

37 years later I can see that reading is “busy”, i.e., worthwhile labor. He is a self-educated man with a college degree. In other words, most of what he knows and believes today is far removed from his college education.

At the time, if I read anything it was a novel. For him, reading was a way to understand the world and what was happening in it. It’s how he formed his worldview and how he determined how to live.

My worldview was formed by listening to other people. My actions were largely moved by who I was with at the time. I see now that it taught me a lot to see him “read” while I was “working.”

Because my understanding of “busy” was strictly physical labor, it is still hard for me to feel like I am doing anything of real value unless it is physical. Other women ask me about my ministry and I am almost embarrassed to admit that a lot of it is done in conversations with the women I mentor or sitting around reading and writing. I don’t “feel” busy.

Recently, a friend greeted me with something like, “Well, there’s the busy lady.” Inside I was thinking, “Well, not really!” As we talked about what we had been doing, I realized it was true, I have been busy – just not by my own definition. Through my conversation with her I realized that my “busy” was still “good busy!”

As I spend more time studying and writing to teach or publish, I can see that my attitude about “work” is changing.  I have learned that writers have to read. It’s necessary to know what God’s word says about every aspect of life, or even that it does say something about every aspect of life!

Studying the book of Ecclesiastes, I discovered that Solomon found that even physical labor could be empty if it was without purpose or desire to please God. He said, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

In the final chapter of the book Solomon determines that the only thing of any value is the fear of God. He said, “My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecclesiastes 12:12-13

So, Solomon wants us to be careful, even about what we read.

Reading and working are both good and godly things to do. I have learned that neither should be exclusive of the other. Our works should influence what we read and our reading should influence our works.

While reading is important so we understand our God and the world He has placed us in, if we never take what we read and allow it to inform and influence our works for Him, we are failing to fear God and keep His commandments.