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Colossians 3:23 Holman Christian Standard Bible
23 Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the
Lord and not for men,
In high school I was required to do somewhere between 4 and
8 hours of physical work a week. My first year there I worked for my math
teacher Ken Thomas. He had created a little industry making honey frames to go
in bee hives. With very primitive equipment he set up a mass production system
that taught me quite a bit. He left at the end of the year, and I have no
recollection of what I did for physical work my last two years. I assure you I
had no enthusiasm for what I was doing. Part of that was that we got paid a
tickey an hour. That was the equivalent of about 3¢ an hour. Even in those days that was a total insult
to anybody. When my mother learned about it, she was furious, “I can’t even get
you work clothes at that rate!” she fumed.
When I went to college at Andrews University, my whole
attitude had changed. I shopped around at various work opportunities and found
very little that would fit in my schedule. The head of custodial, Art Davis,
saw me vainly searching for work: “I’ll give you work” he offered. I jumped for
it. The next Sunday I reported for work. There was a call for all students to
help reap ornamental gourds on the farm, so Mr. Davis sent a bunch of us over
to help the university farm. They had planted a whole field of these pretty
little fall decorative items.
I grabbed a bag and started picking all the good ones. It
was back-breaking work because the gourds were all on small vines close to the
ground. But I worked cheerfully and with enthusiasm. I didn’t realize that some
people were watching the whole group of us who were doing this. Word got back
to Mr. Davis. When I reported for work the next day, I discovered I had not
only a job but also a friend in Mr. Davis. He told me he appreciated my
enthusiasm and work ethic. He gave me the best paying jobs on campus and enabled
me to pay my own way through college until I graduated.
I confess that the thought had not entered my head that I
was doing this for the Lord. But over the next few years, I discovered that a
lot of the bosses I had were not like Mr. Davis. They wanted to get the
absolute most out of me and pay me the absolute least they could get away with.
After the first year of full-time teaching and abuse, I said to my wife, Sylvia,
“I have decided that I am working for the Lord,
but humans are paying me. I will continue to work for the Lord.” She concurred with me. God saw to
it that I always had a job and, although I never got rich, things went better
and better for me and my family. I gained a lot of satisfaction from my work,
and now we are comfortably retired. Praise the Lord!
Thank You, Lord, for
prospering us and for giving us a satisfying life.
[1]
https://www.ebpsupply.com/blog/how-to-use-floor-buffer-vs-burnisher
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