Proverbs 10:4
A slack hand causes poverty,
but the hand of the diligent makes rich.
People are often surprised to discover that a goodly portion of Scripture is devoted to common sense advice about business, child-rearing, and so forth. We have this notion that a truly spiritual book would not soil itself with attention to such mundane, workaday drudgery. But the fact is, God immersed himself in our mundane workaday world to the point of becoming a human being himself and enduring all the tedium and tiredness that came with being a day laborer and a Galilean peasant. In so doing, he blessed human work and desired that we be blessed through it. Like all human things, work can be pursued in one of two ways. We can — as we so often do with money, sex, power — treat it as an idol and devote our lives to it above all things, including above God himself. Such a choice to be a workaholic carries within it the seeds of its own judgment as many a miserable businessman will tell you on the way to divorce court or to his child’s psychiatrist. The other way to regard work is to see it as sacramental and seek to honor God through it. Those who do this will not only work diligently, they will rest and worship God diligently too. For it is we, says Pope John Paul II, who dignify our work, not work that dignifies us.
