Growing up as one of ten kids in a farming family, I understood from a young age that work is an inescapable part of life.
Before breakfast, beds were to be made, pets and barn animals to be fed and watered, horse and cow stalls to be mucked out. There were never-ending baskets of laundry to deal with, floors to sweep, toilets to clean. And dishes to wash—an eternal mountain of dishes.
But it was only as an adult that I learned that work could also be an expression of love and worship.
The quest for a lived expression of the holistic relationship of work, faith, and practical realities is age old. It sits at the heart of the biblical narrative. It has driven generations of seekers to pursue the question “What is the life God wants for his people?”
One answer to this question comes from the Bruderhof community in which I grew up.
A Way in the Wilderness
In the aftermath of World War I, a small group of German friends headed by philosopher and theologian Eberhard Arnold and his wife, Emmy, decided to attempt a life of shared faith in the Anabaptist tradition. Inspired by the Book of Acts’ accounts of the early church, whose members shared everything with each other (4:32), the Arnolds and their friends set up a voluntary household in the rural village of Sannerz, which became the first Bruderhof community.
Members warmly welcomed visitors, as we still do. But those expecting a spiritual retreat were in for a reality check when Arnold proffered a pitchfork and a place alongside him as he turned compost. As he put it:
Work must be indivisible from prayer, prayer indivisible from work. Our work is thus a form of worship, since our faith and daily life are inseparable, forming a single whole. Even the most mundane task, if done as for Christ in a spirit of love and dedication, can be consecrated to God as an act of prayer. To pray in words but not in deeds is hypocrisy.
Looking back, my childhood and adolescence at the Woodcrest Bruderhof community in upstate New York, one of 23 such communities now around the world, embodied this belief in work as prayer, prayer as work. Perhaps that is why, long before he and I started dating, I noticed Chris at the sink.
Chris had grown up in another Bruderhof community and moved to Woodcrest to attend a local university, where I was also a student. He would be there after our community’s evening meal finished, up to his elbows in trays and suds, laughing, talking, scouring.
He was studying English literature and journalism and could pen thoughtful poems and persuasive essays—but he wasn’t afraid to scrub pots, generally staying to the last. And he did what I hated most: cleaned out that sieve with all the bits at the bottom of the sink. Impressive.
Both Chris and I had recently taken church membership vows and were excited to be embarking on a lifetime of following Christ with fellow believers. We especially loved that in the Bruderhof, everyone was valued and celebrated for who they were, not what their careers were.
But as we prayerfully began a relationship, I worried from time to time that our work backgrounds might pose a possible hindrance. My family was decidedly blue-collar. His was not.
Before Christmas that year, my dad casually asked me one evening, “I know your young man is focused on his studies, but can he work with his hands?”
I passed this on to Chris during one of our pre-class walks by the river, where we loved to spot “our bird,” an elegant great blue heron. “Hmm,” was all he said in response.
Faith Lived Close to the Land
On Christmas morning, underneath the tree, I found my present from Chris: a handcrafted maple and mahogany vase, the neck shaped like a wading heron. It was filled with golden blooms. “Work is love made visible,” the poet Kahlil Gibran famously asserted. And I knew Chris had proved him right.
Until then, I had had no idea that Chris was capable of this kind of craftsmanship. He later told me he’d grown up learning woodworking from his father, a pastor. My dad gave Chris’s vase a careful once-over with silent approval. We were a farming family and well versed in the 4-H pillars: head, heart, hands, health. Apparently, in their own way, Chris’s family was too.
During the remainder of our two-year courtship and throughout the early years of our marriage, Chris and I found the concept of work as a form of worship straightforward. He wrote and edited for the Bruderhof’s publishing house, while I taught in our primary school. We loved our work. We welcomed first one son, then a second, and poured ourselves into parenthood while continuing to find opportunities to serve within our community and neighborhood.
Then in November 2002, Chris and I accepted an invitation from our church to move to Australia to join a new Bruderhof community called Danthonia. We arrived in rural New South Wales to find a few brothers and sisters who lived in sheds and simple cottages on acres of barren land. There wasn’t much else, except work—lots of it.
At first, we thought farming would provide much-needed income and add value to the region. But by the time we arrived, the land was exhausted from two years of drought and 80-plus years of overgrazing.
As we labored to restore the land, our community started a hand-carved sign company. The first years were full of setbacks and surprises and hardly any sales.
Chris, when not working on administrative tasks, became skilled with chisels and helped carve sign letters, and when I wasn’t teaching school, I lent a hand with sales and sign painting. Bit by bit, the business grew.
At the same time, alongside other Danthonia members, we renovated sheds into homes, grew vegetables, built an abattoir, planted orchards, raised our children, and adapted to scorching droughts and torrential rains.
Work, worship, service, love. We poured ourselves into the land, community, and home, with mountains of toil before us, continents away from what we had known. Our life seemed to lack boundaries, the labor nonstop. Work as worship lost its idealized luster. Was this what God wanted for us?
It was around this time I came across the Hebrew word avodah—and our challenging life in Australia began to take on new meaning.
The Hebrew Torah uses avodah to describe the brutal toil of the Israelite slaves (avadim) in Egypt. It’s also the word for the hard labor of the Levite priests who offered sacrifices to God in the tabernacle and, later, the temple: stoking large fires, slaughtering animals, lifting heavy grain sacks. Today, Jews still speak of their daily prayers as avodah shebalev, “the work/worship that is in the heart.”
Love in an Attention Crisis
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explains that, whereas English translations use words like “ceremony” or “service” for avodah to describe Passover commemorations (see Exodus 12), “hard work” would be a more accurate rendering:
The same word is used to describe slavery and freedom, bondage and liberation, Egypt and exodus. … Nothing has changed. There we were avadim, here we are avadim. There we had to work for a master, here we have to work for a Master. There it was hard, here it is hard. All that has changed is the master’s identity. There it was Pharaoh. Here it is God. But we remain avadim.
In the New Testament, perhaps the apostle Paul had something similar in mind when he styled himself “a slave of Christ Jesus” (Rom. 1:1, CEB)—not only as a statement of allegiance but also as an acknowledgement of the rigorous labor that true discipleship demands.
The ultimate example of avodah is Jesus himself, who challenges us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him (Matt. 16:24). On the night he knew he would be betrayed, Jesus taught his disciples a profound lesson, performing a slave’s task by washing their feet. He reminded them—and us—that if the Master himself is willing to serve his servants, how much more ought they to care for one another (John 13:12–17).
In those early years in Australia, our work was rigorous, physically demanding in an intense climate with minimal infrastructure. Yet as I meditated on the meaning of avodah, I was propelled by the liberating thrill of undertaking kingdom work: engaging my heart, mind, and body to build something beautiful for God in a strange land.
Chris and I would walk home late after a day of work and an evening of worship, look up at the closeness of the stars, and realize the closeness of the relationships we were forming with our new brothers and sisters, our numerous guests, our neighbors, and each other.
I’m happy to say that those years of intense building up are in the rearview mirror now. Rhythms of rest, of course, are the underpinning to sustainable work habits. Our work life now has boundaries, our land is flourishing, and our business is established. We work hard and rest well.
Choose This (Labor) Day Whom You Will Serve
I do not wish those early years in Australia back, but their lessons remain. We became a people of work as worship made visible. Each day held concrete opportunities to show love and forgiveness to others, to engage in a discipleship of heart and hand. Each day still does.
Chris and I have now lived at Danthonia for nearly 25 years. Not all Christians feel called to live in intentional communities like ours, but the call to work as worship is universal. It is what has inspired churches in our area to cook and serve a weekly meal for those who need food and fellowship. It is what has motivated an 86-year-old friend to raise funds for hundreds of village water tanks in Myanmar.
Avodah finds expression in myriad ways, and it is no doubt spurring the body of Christ to works of mercy both near at hand and in the world at large.
Naturally, in any shared life of work, family, committee, or church, we have the capacity to hurt one another. But in performing the undesirable tasks of service, we also have the capacity to honor Christ in the people whom we live with and love, whom we have hurt and who have hurt us.
In this way, a tradition of work becomes the fulfillment of love.
Some people clean toilets or teeth, sharpen knives or minds, craft wood or words. In all of our lives, and wherever we find ourselves, we can choose to turn the most menial work into acts of love as profound as washing another’s feet: brewed tea, swept floors, cooked meals, folded laundry, clean dishes. Avodah.
I still notice Chris at the community dish sink. I notice when he cleans out the shower drain with the same meticulous nature that he applies to wordsmithery. I notice the heron vase, which has flown with us across oceans and to several continents and still regularly graces our table.
All these remind me that when heart and hands work in harmony, motivated by love, there is the potential for something beautiful to be born: an act of worship.
Norann Voll lives at the Danthonia Bruderhof in rural Australia with her husband, Chris. They have three sons. She writes about discipleship, motherhood, and feeding people. Find her on Instagram, X, and Substack.
