Playing the Trumpet
The Silver Trumpet ran a short piece today that caught my attention. The topic concerned work, specficially hard work. After considering the perspective, I wanted to be certain that I did not give the topic short shrift, and so decided the best place to detail my thoughts on the topic would be here.
A definition from Strong’s Hebrew is going to be necessary:
There is not, in the above distinction, a necessary relationship to “hard work”. The “or” also does not automatically mean work AND service but could instead mean work OR service–the latter being the exclusive case. This has application to the Silver Trumpet’s piece–particularly this part:
The understanding here reflected in the writing is an understanding of what we might understand as toil or labor without the Holy Spirit. If we see people worshipping hard, for instance, in a Church service, do we tend to say those people are “working hard?” Contrast that idiom and use with the idea of someone being on a construction site. Would we say the construction workers are “working hard”? In Church, the Holy Spirit ought to be present. On the construction site, maybe not. The curse of labor often gets tangled in the concept of work, or service.
Levi Genes – not for mining
Levites, it is said, though responsible for carrying the Ark of the Covenant were more held aloft by the Ark itself. The idea behind the statement is that when a person is fulfilling the work or duty to be done as a service to YHVH, the burden is lightened into something that becomes a kind of mystical joy. The mundane tasks that might seem rote and boring are elevated into an intimate relationship that creates a closeness with the essence of the Glory of God. People do drugs for much less of a sensation, and they often do “mundane tasks” while on them. (Brushing one’s teeth while on acid, perhaps) If drugs are a cheap, unsanctioned knock-off or ersatz for the Holy Spirit, how much more magnified would these tasks be with the full presence of the Holy Spirit?
Concordance
The above Strong’s definition lists the Hebrew word “abad” as being a primitive root. Its meaning is to work, serve, labor, worship, or possibly enslave. Egypt, of course, is the Biblical discourse on slavery, and the Hebrew people generally found it to be disagreeable although they became accustomed to being slaves in ways that made them not want to leave Egypt. This concept of labor and slavery being linked comes again to the point of some of the misperception present in the article in The Silver Trumpet. Levites are not “enslaved to YHVH”. That kind of phraseology is more of a Pauline idea. Levites are, however, to render service specific to YHVH and traditionally received certain things that other tribe members did not receive for doing so. YHVH was their duty, their meal ticket, and their inheritance as well as their home and their occupation. They didn’t serve YHVH at say 9:00 am then hit the rush hour traffic to go work at Microsoft on the latest release until 5:00 pm. The work was seamless and sanctioned by the Most High. This is a key difference.
The Rest of the Story
The rest of the story in the Silver Trumpet article is decent, although good works need not be difficult as such. It is often the case that they become that way because a lot of evil is being performed that would otherwise not desire good works to be performed. This is “hard work” not because the work is necessarily hard, but because other people are choosing to do what they ought not do. As Messiah said, “My yoke is light”. It is up to us to jettison our baggage overboard around work and slavery to fully understand what He meant. It could be, for instance, that we have enslaved ourselves to work because we are working for ourselves when we ought to be aiming to to the Will of the Only Work worth doing. If that’s so, the problem is in our own inner relation to work and worship. The only hard thing there is to go far enough within ourselves with transparency to find the snag.