Labor Day-Work is Prayer

 When we started Life Way Counseling Centers the going was very tough. Starting any new organization can be rough going but getting the word out about a new Christ centered Counseling agency was incredibly difficult.

We met often in what is now called "Miracle Meetings" to plan and pray. We adopted a slogan taken from the Franciscan Brothers who went to France centuries ago to clear the swamps. Christian Counseling is much like clearing swamps. The slogan was and is:

Ora et Labora in Latin or Prayer and Work in English. It takes both to succeed.

Chad Hovind has a new book out and I am reading it again. I hope you will get and read it as well. The title is Godonomics and can be purchased  at all the normal outlets. Chad is a good writer and has, IMO, some great insights about money, economics, government policies and how they fit with basic Christian theology.

The following article is by Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal. Peggy is one of the best writers we have today and her insights are often right on target.

Two small points on an end-of-summer weekend. One is connected to Labor Day and the meaning of work. It grows out of an observation Mike Huckabee made on his Fox show a few weeks ago. He said that we see joblessness as an economic fact, we talk about the financial implications of widespread high unemployment, and that isn't wrong but it misses the central point. Joblessness is a personal crisis because work is a spiritual event.
A job isn't only a means to a paycheck, it's more. "To work is to pray," the old priests used to say. God made us as many things, including as workers. When you work you serve and take part. To work is to be integrated into the daily life of the nation. There is pride and satisfaction in doing work well, in working with others and learning a discipline or a craft or an art. To work is to grow and to find out who you are.
In return for performing your duties, whatever they are, you receive money that you can use freely and in accordance with your highest desire. A job allows you the satisfaction of supporting yourself or your family, or starting a family. Work allows you to renew your life, which is part of the renewing of civilization.
Work gives us purpose, stability, integration, shared mission. And so to be unable to work—unable to find or hold a job—is a kind of catastrophe for a human being.

This is what has been called "The Protestant Work Ethic" but is central to all Americans not just Protestants.  It is an ethic under severe attack from well-meaning people who think they can take from producers and give to non-producers without impacting the whole system.

As a Family Therapist retired after decades of watching families try to overprotect its members I want to emphasize the positive nature of our work ethic in America. On this Labor Day may we see the spiritual benefits of work and of prayer.