Christians especially have a role to play in using their
enterprises as vehicles for stewarding their communities
- Joy at Work Bible Study Companion
I have to remind myself of the time and culture in which Sayers wrote this writing....1947, and in England. These were tough times in so many ways. Yet, she ends her writing with a passionate statement
To work to serve the community we must
forget the community and serve the work.
Her reasons? She gives three:
One - you cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see how the community is taking it....If your heart is not wholly in the work, the work will not be good - and work that is not good serves neither God nor the community; it only serves Mammon.
Two - the moment you think of serving other people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains; you begin to think that you have a claim on the community. But if your mind is set upon serving the work, then you know you have nothing to look for; the only reward the work can give you is the satisfaction of beholding its perfection..........The work takes all and gives nothing but itself; and to serve the work is a labor of pure love.
Third - if you set out to serve the community, you will probably end by merely fulfilling a public demand - and you may not even do that......The danger of "serving the community" is that one is part of the communtiy, and that in serving it one may only be serving a kind of communal egotism.
Ms. Sayers goes on to say....The only true way of serving the community is to be truly in sympathy with the community - to be one's self part of the communtiy - and then serve the work, without giving the community another thought. Then the work will endure, because it will be true to itself. It is the work that serves the community; the business of the worker is to serve the work.
Pondering this small writing has taken longer than I thought and while my journal includes many notes, I haven't written the comments here that I had expected. As I reflect over the past 9 months and the journey I've been on with my work, and community, I know I need to continue to reflect on my view of scripture and how my work serves God and let me (the worker) serve the work.
I'll remind again that you can find a link to a free copy of this writing in the above right column. There's also a link to David Miller's republished edition that includes his excellently written forward.
To that end..........worship well
