Christopher Wren

 

After the great fire in London in 1666, Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral.

One day, while Wren was visiting the construction site, he stopped and talked to three different men working on a wall.

He asked the first what he was doing.

“I’m a bricklayer, I’m building a wall.”

He asked the second what he was doing.

“I’m earning three shillings.”

He asked the third what he was doing.  

“I’m helping Sir Christopher Wren build a Cathedral for the Almighty.”

Work is a holy principle.  

It’s a principle of God.  

In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul counsels the people to “work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.”

But our purpose matters deeply and guides how we see and perform that work.

Speaking of this situation Jim Baker wrote, “We need to recognize that God didn’t make anybody to just be a bricklayer.  Don’t hear me wrong, nothing is wrong with being a bricklayer. But, as Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: “If a man is “called” to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

It isn’t nearly as important what we are doing but why and how.