“So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.’”
When God created Adam and Eve, he made them in his image. Part of bearing God’s image means showing the world what he is like, and all throughout the creation account we see God working. We see him cultivating. We see him creating, forming, ruling, and reigning. And so he commands his image bearers to do the same. Later on in the creation story (Gen. 2), we see God telling Adam that the Garden was given to him to tend and to keep. God intended for work to be one of the ways his glory would be spread throughout the world. Because Eve is also an image bearer of God and because she, too, was a recipient of God’s command in Genesis 1:27–28, we know this task was for her as well. As Adam and Eve worked in the Garden, they were proclaiming God’s glory to the ends of the earth.
Work was created by God and is therefore part of our life as well. We live in a society that tends to divide work and home, isolating work to the office, the classroom, or some place other than the home. But that’s not how God sees work. Long before the home and the marketplace were seen as separate spheres, God created men and women to work and he called it good. If you spend your days changing sheets, cooking meals, and wiping noses, or you spend your days teaching students, caring for sick patients, or closing business deals, your work matters to God.
You can find value in whatever work it is that you do today, in the home or in the marketplace, because God created you in his image and he created you for good work. Your work is important, even the most ordinary and repetitive work, because God is the author of work and it all points to him. Work is part of his good plan to spread his glory in the world—and you are part of that same work today.
Reflect
Read Genesis 1:27–28. Are you ever tempted to see your work as too ordinary to be valuable? How does seeing yourself as an image bearer of God infuse your work with purpose?
Pray
Where do you struggle to see the most ordinary tasks as important to God and reflections of his glory? Ask God to help you see your work as a significant part of bearing his image.
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