Pastor Chris Rainey
8 October 2020
Growing up, my grandparents introduced me to a phrase, “the life of Riley.” It means to lead a life of luxury without hard work, which my working-class grandparents — my grandmother was a cafeteria manager and my grandfather was a bricklayer — resented when they saw someone they thought had bypassed the hard work part and did not deserve the seeming leisurely life they lived.
In the ancient world, a common element among pagan religions was the teaching that the gods didn’t work. Instead, the gods made people work so they wouldn’t have to,¹ meaning the ideal life in many places in the world became viewed as a life of leisure with minimal work. Even the gods, it seemed, wanted to live the life of Riley.
Many people idolize a life without work, whether it is retirement, or winning the lottery, or viewing work only as a means to having money to pay for leisure activities. One of my professors in seminary, Dr. Gary McGee, once said in a class, “One of the signs of the decline of western civilization is that our greatest architectural achievements in the 20th century are sports stadiums.” His point was that sports, a leisure activity for all but the few who are playing the game, had taken on an inordinate amount of importance in society. If you can at least pay for a ticket to a game, anyone can be “Riley” for a little while.
It is written in Genesis 1:1-2:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Genesis 2:1-2 says,
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
Photograph by Rudolpho Quiros via Pexels
In the beginning, we do not see God living the life of Riley. We see a working-class God getting his hands dirty and creating, taking what is formless and void, and basically unorganized, and “forming and filling” the earth. God spent the rest of the creation week filling in the details and organizing the various parts of the world: light, vegetation, land and sea creatures, sun, moon, and stars, and finally human beings. Then God rested on the seventh day. This is God’s pattern: work and rest. This is the pattern he established for us.
Unlike the ancient gods delegating all work to human beings, the Bible reveals that work is an activity that is shared between God and human beings. God works, and we work. So whether it is cleaning an office or a school, manufacturing by taking the raw materials of earth and turning them into usable products, organizing a business’s administrative processes and work-flows, writing a document, building a home, making a meal, running a household, composing a song, or painting the lines on a roadway, this is part and parcel with the work that God was doing at the beginning. In these activities, we take what is formless and unorganized and transform those things into something that is a blessing to others. This is the blessing of work.
The life of Riley may have its allure, but using our gifts and talents through work — paid or unpaid — is a way to bless others and provide for our own needs.
Let’s Pray…
- That we will have a proper perspective on work and leisure
- That we will see our work as a God-ordained opportunity for service
¹CSB Worldview Study Bible.