The “Why” in What You Do

One of the cruel experiments performed by Nazi doctors during World War 2 on prisoners was an experiment initially designed to study endurance.  The plan was simply to have a group of fairly healthy men dig a hole, then with wheelbarrows move the dirt to a pile about 50 yards away.  After the hole was finished they had the men refill the wheelbarrows, fill in the hole they had just dug, and begin the process over again.

The study did something inadvertently that surprised even the Nazis.  After days of monotonous, long, arduous days of digging and refilling, digging and refilling, with no end in sight the men did not collapse.  Instead they went mad. They would intentionally run from the guards knowing they would be shot. They deliberately ran into an electric fence and died in that way.  They literally began to lose their minds.

Some of us have jobs that make us feel the same way. The monotony, the meaninglessness, the unending assembly line can make us want to run screaming into the fence as well.  Unless we know a secret:

Our work has meaning.  God has a purpose in what we are doing even when we aren’t sure ourselves what it may be. God is not a God of randomness and chance.  If you are working a job you’d rather not, it may well be that there are people there who need to know the God who can give meaning to their existence as He gave to you!

Work is not a punishment.  It is not God harshly treating us to pay us back for sin or wrong in our lives.  Jesus has already paid for that!

God is a God of meaning and hope.  He knows that we cannot reach our full potential as human beings apart from some kind of work and effort.  Have you ever watched children play?  That’s their work!  It’s calling out things about them that sitting at home doing nothing could never do!

If you feel you have a meaningless, frustrating, dead-end job ask the God who created work to help you see the “why” in what you do.

It just may change your life!