Why Our Work Matters to God

When God put Adam in the Garden of Eden in Genesis, he put him there to work.

What’s significant, though, is how God puts Adam in the garden to work.

In the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, the writers present their gods as stressed out, chaotic, and fighting amongst themselves. They are exasperated with the world that they have created (it takes too much time to take care of all those pesky plants and animals when we’re fighting all the time!), so they create humanity as slaves to do the work they don’t want to be doing in the first place.

The vision of work in the Enuma Elish is obligation, and the original vocation of humans is slavery to the gods.

In contrast, the writer of Genesis presents God as quite at ease, and perfectly peaceful. Instead of being overwhelmed, creating Adam and Eve appears to be his great joy — “it was very good” (Gen 1:31, NRSVUE). And, the way God creates humanity is by getting down in the dirt like a gardener (quite in contrast to the Babylonian gods who seem to be too good for the world they created), and he creates Adam to get down in the dirt and garden alongside him. Adam, made in the image of the first Gardener, is called to the vocation of gardening himself, not as a slave but as a partner.

The vision of work in Genesis is delight, and the original vocation of humans is to partner with God.

Then, God gives Adam two primary assignments:

He asks Adam to partner with him in the work of cultivating the soil and the work of creating names for the animals.

God is the first cultivator and creator, and Adam is invited to join God in this good work.

This, we might say, is the original job description for humanity: to partner with God in the work of cultivation and creation.

If we think about it, cultivating the soil eventually becomes gardening, which eventually becomes farming, which eventually becomes sustainable food production, which eventually becomes the infrastructure around which towns, cities, and civilizations can be built. “Till [the soil] and keep it” holds the seed for a entire range of human vocations committed to the caretaking of human society.

Similarly, the work of creating names for the animals, naming something which hasn’t been named yet, becomes the work of anyone who has to make something out of nothing. As much as civilizations need food, tools, and all of the practical things, they also need philosophers, artists, researchers, and innovators — all the vocations that help us to name what isn’t yet and step into it.

In many ways, these two original tasks given to Adam and Eve contain the seeds of every human job:

(Many thanks to the Friday morning prayers group at The Table Boston for helping me populate this list and to Culture Making by Andy Crouch for planting the seeds of these ideas many years ago — although any unhelpful thought is mine, not theirs.)

Here’s why this matters: no matter what we do for our work (assuming we all have ethical and legal jobs), it matters to God because it is part of our original human vocation to partner with God in the work of gardening.

If you grew up in an evangelical space, perhaps you heard work’s value be reduced to whether or not we could preach the gospel to our coworkers. I’m hoping to shift the balance to say this: our work has intrinsic value because we are partnering with God in the work of cultivation and creation. Of course, I am all about living on mission, I just don’t think the Genesis vision of work is dependent upon whether or not we preach the gospel.

• The work of parenting matters because we are partnering with God in the cultivation of the hearts and bodies of our kids, and creation of a new family culture for them to grow up in.

• The work of teaching matters because we are partnering with God in the cultivation of all the thoughts and ideas that have gone before us, and creating new and innovative ways to shape minds for tomorrow.

• The work of sales matters because we are partnering with God in the cultivation of relationships and data, and creating new ways to serve a new generation with what we can offer them.

• The work of nursing matters because we are partnering with God in the cultivation of the wealth of medical knowledge we are inheriting and stewarding, and creating cultures of care in our workspaces.

As you can already see, the list above may be helpful but it’s also a bit dualistic and reductionistic — we all get to cultivate and create in our work every day.

My hope today is to raise our faith that God cares more about our work than we previously thought, and is more interested in partnering with us in it than we dared dream.

So, our questions today are simple:

• In our work today, where might God be inviting us to cultivate something — to take care of a relationship, an email, a budget, a form, a system, a way things have been done in the past? How can we do it with him?

• In our work today, where might God be inviting us to create something new — to write, to dream, to innovate, to solve a problem in a new way? How can we do it with him?

If I can ever support you in your journey of coming alive and living in love with Jesus, please don’t hesitate to hit “reply” on this email and let me know.

-Ryan

P.S. It is one of the greatest joys of my life to help people come alive and live in love with Jesus, especially by waking up to the continual conversation we get to enjoy with God. Our team is working on creating some beautiful prayer resources this year, starting with a daily prayer journal designed to help you grow in your ability to hear God’s voice. Please consider becoming a founding partner with us to receive every resource we create in 2025 completely free!