More often than not, people tend to frown upon work.

They view work as challenging and cheap, time-consuming and tiring. Instead of treating work as an honor, we treat it more as a chore.

But after recently studying Dorothy Sayers’ essay, Why Work, our Yellow Leaf team has come to define work in a whole new way. And we wanted to share our discoveries with you! So as we begin our Why Work blog series, let’s take a look at where work came from…

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In scripture, we find that the fall of man took place in Genesis 3:6 when “Eve took of its [the tree’s] fruit and ate.” A common misconception we have is that work came AFTER this moment…that God created work as a punishment for mankind. But the truth is that work existed when all was still perfect. Genesis 2:15 says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Therefore, work is GOOD.

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So what are the implications for us today?

Well, Dorothy Sayers suggests “…we should no longer think of work as something that we hastened to get through in order to enjoy our leisure; we should look on our leisure as the period of changed rhythm that refreshed us for the delightful purpose of getting on with our work.”

Wow. What an incredible way to view work! This means that if we start seeing work as an opportunity for the creation to glorify the Creator, then we will no longer put leisure first. Instead, we will come to enjoy work as a means of doing what we were created to do.

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We’ll be unpacking tons more lessons on work throughout this series. So be sure not to miss out as we continue to answer the question, WHY WORK?