Hello to one and all.I want to take the liberty to reflect with you on the spiritual dimension of Labor Day. It is one of our oldest federal legal holidays. (1894)
I dare to bring you back to the very first pages of the Holy Bible where the roots of Jewish and Christian faith find a basic teaching about work and labor.
Genesis : Chapter 1; verse 21, etc: God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth. 29 God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; 30 and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened. [6th day]
Chapter 2:
I dare to bring you back to the very first pages of the Holy Bible where the roots of Jewish and Christian faith find a basic teaching about work and labor.
Genesis : Chapter 1; verse 21, etc: God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth. 29 God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; 30 and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened. [6th day]
Chapter 2:
1 Thus the heavens and the earth and all their
array were completed. On the seventh day God completed the work he
had been doing; he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had
undertaken. 3 God blessed the seventh
day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in
creation.
To see a historical overview of this poster
click on the link below:
We believers in the Word of God as found in the Bible, here in the first pages of Genesis, rest our faith in the command of God to take dominion over all that He has given us. It is no secret that this command entails work, lots of work. It also means that the reward is not just for the direct "worker" but for the benefit of all of creation - Labor. The flourishment of all creation for all creatures depends on the concerted effort of every descendant of Adam and Eve.
The concept of "Labor" is a rather challenging one and would require more than the +/- 300 words here. That aside, since the name of the holiday is "Labor" and not "Work" it falls upon us to reflect a bit on the meaning that is carried in the concept of "Labor."
"Labor" is, in fact, a generic term. Think of it this way: The final cost of any commodity or service is determined by the entirety of the human efforts it takes to bring it to tangible reality. The distinct human efforts that go into the final product to give it its final value, are "Work."
In Genesis 3:
The LORD God made for the man and his wife garments of skin, with which he clothed them.
22 Then the LORD God
said: See! The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil! Now, what if he also reaches out his hand to
take fruit from the tree of life, and eats of it and lives forever? 23 The LORD God therefore banished him from
the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he had been taken. 24 He
expelled the man, stationing the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.
It is to be noted that it is the "work" of the human that is being targeted while the finished product that results from it is the sum of the "labor" that redounds to the human's benefit.
Our Labor Day then, is as much a time for faith-filled reflection as it is of human thanksgiving for the fruits of human efforts, personal as well as communitarian.
Therefore, I implore all of you to thank our Loving Creator for endowing us with the gifts that we use to make human life better thanks to the gift of creative understanding with which He endows us, not just here in North America but across the globe.
As you mull this over, don't forget that it's against Dion's first commandment,
"No Crying at my Funeral."
No comments:
Post a Comment