This week on the blog, we’re studying a few verses in 1 Thessalonians chapters 4 and 5 that refer to work. In this post, I want to mention 1 Corinthians 10:31, which is in another letter of Paul. There Paul writes, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” That’s a great perspective on work. Work can be an act of worship to God.
That’s convicting to me. I teach adjunct Bible classes for Lancaster Bible College and Messiah University. Earlier this year, I taught an eight-week online class for LBC, and the topic was the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There are many online models of education, so let me explain how this particular online class worked.
An LBC professor designs the class, the assignments, readings, etc. I am not involved in that process. I get the course after it is fully developed. Each week, I lead a live one-hour Zoom session in the evenings. Students can attend on Zoom, or if it doesn’t suit their schedule, they must watch the recording of the class later in the week. For example, my class had 27 students, but an average of 6 or 7 were there live for the Zoom session. Everything else in the class is asynchronous, meaning the students do the reading, watch the videos, and complete the assignments on their own time. And there are a lot of assignments. Here’s why:
This class is a part of the college’s accelerated program, mostly for people who are working full-time jobs, have families, and cannot get their education in a traditional classroom setting. “Accelerated” also means that the person designing the course takes what is a normal 16-week semester course, and packs it down into eight weeks.
For those eight weeks, I really don’t do much teaching. Just the one-hour Zoom session each week. Because of that lack of in-person or synchronous time, the students have far more assignments than a regular class, an average of six assignments per week.
Remember how I mentioned that I had 27 students in the class? Multiply that by six assignments per week. Each weekend for those eight weeks, I was grading, on average 162 assignments. My Saturdays and Sundays were shot with grading. It was bananas.
If you’re wondering, “Did you know the grading workload before you said ‘Yes’ to teaching the course?” Yes, I knew. I had taught the exact course previously, more than once. But you know how you forget? You work hard on something, maybe even hate it, then it is over, and you breathe a huge sigh of relief. You might even say, “I’m never doing that again.” Then you get your paycheck for the work, and that feels good, and you slowly forget how difficult it was. Soon enough, you’re doing it again. Struggling again. That was me with this class.
I’m telling you this story because when I was grading all those 162 assignments each week, I was sometimes struggling. I was not always grading to the glory of God. I was not worshiping God as I was grading.
Even when we are dissatisfied with our work, even when we are trying to get a new job, taking classes, getting training, scouring job websites, updating our resumes, and every hour at our current job feels frustrating, we can still worship in our work.
How about you? Are you worshiping God in how you work?
Some of you reading this are retired. You don’t have work. In tomorrow’s post I’ll talk about how Paul’s principles in this week’s passage clearly relate to retirees as well.
Photo by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 