A weekly chat about life together as the people of God here on the East Coast
RUBBISH JOBS
“So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour…” (Exodus 1:11)
Imagine how it felt to have been one of the children of Israel born into those middle years of Israel’s 400-year enslavement in Egypt. The stories of Joseph’s glory days would have been dog-eared and the words of promise would have seemed, well… beyond their sell-by-date! ‘If God can’t save us by now, when will he?’ We know the end of the story; that through Moses, God dramatically saved his people. However, all the Israelites had known was enslavement and a God who seemed to have forgotten them (Ps 13:1).
Are you feeling uncomfortable? Do you want to dash to a heartwarming verse that will enable you to persuade yourself that everything will turn out ok in the end? Before you go there, linger with me in the uncertainty of these Israelites’ lived experiences. They are a classic example of people who had ‘rubbish jobs’ that they didn’t want to be in, apparently without an escape plan! How do we make sense of this crushing reality? I thought God was my rescuer and saviour! So, where is he when I’m facing another soul-destroying day at work?
Let me give you five headlines that will hopefully start the conversation, but honestly, this is a conversation best done with a cuppa in hand, and time to talk and pray. So, you might want to talk about these points with your running partners.
1. Rubbish jobs are part of the brokenness of this broken world
They are a daily reminder that we live in a broken world. God created us for work (Genesis 1:28-30) as part of his good and perfect design. However, when sin entered the world, it had a corrupting effect on everything. Imagine coming home from holiday to find that your water tank in the loft has leaked and water has gone everywhere. That’s what has happened with sin. It damaged and destroyed so much, including God’s good design for work. So yes, many of us will end up doing jobs that…well, suck!
2. Rubbish jobs remind us that we are made for another world
The world’s answer to having a rubbish job is to go and fix it for yourself. It’s your right! However, rubbish jobs remind us (or even force us) to see how God has made us for another world. We’ve not been made for this world and a few short years of relatively enjoyable work. We’ve been made for so much more, destined to enjoy the eternal banquet of heaven (Ps 23:5). Paul certainly didn’t have an easy job. His job description included, shipwrecks, floggings, hunger, nakedness, exposure to the elements, and attempted assassination! Yet, he could see beyond these things to something greater…a life lived for and pointing towards Christ Jesus (2 Cor 4:17,Phil 3:8). I’m not saying this is easy. If it was, we would not be mardling about it, yet there is something worshipful about lives lived in the tough, difficult seasons of life that don’t lose sight of Jesus but daily get up and look to be faithful to him.
3. Rubbish jobs reveal to us our need for fellowship
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15). Paul’s expectation is that in this life we will have seasons of mourning, when life hurts (and some of that comes from rubbish jobs). His remedy is…[drumroll] fellowship. Draw close to and walk with one another. Be in one another’s lives. Pray together. Weep together. Grit your teeth together. Shout and scream together, but do it as the people of God. Rubbish jobs are a wonderful way of reminding us that the polish on what the world offers, quickly rubs off and then what?
4. Rubbish jobs are sometimes a way God speaks to us
C.S. Lewis once said: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world”. Painfully rubbish jobs can be a means by which God is wanting to get our attention; maybe to highlight some heart idols, to show us our ambivalence towards fellowship, or an unhealthy vision of ‘success’. Painful jobs have a great ability to clear the dross from our lives and reveal the bedrock values that we live by. Speaking from personal experience, it is not always pretty!
5. Rubbish jobs remind us that there is always a mystery in God’s ways
However much we try to understand what is going on in life, there are going to be seasons where you have to chalk them off as part of the mystery of following God. This is not a cop-out but rather an act of faith. If we only believe and live according to what we fully understand, how is that faith? Sometimes we have to live in the midst of the unknown, pain and frustration and join with the Psalmist in saying:
Listen, God! Please pay attention!
Can you make sense of these ramblings, my groans and cries?
King-God, I need your help.
Every morning you’ll hear me at it again.
Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on your alter and watch for fire to descend
(Psalm 5)