So When Do We Work ?

Once upon a time, long ago when I was a kid . . . and that really is getting strangely distant. I told someone the other day, it used to be when remembering something that happened 20 years ago; it was a memory from my childhood. Now, as memories go, I was on the homestretch of childhood, forty years ago! Yet I digress . . . Back to our "once upon a time," there was a saying. "Man works from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done." Years before that, long, long before me, it was put into writing, "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work."

The industrial revolution and the material boom of the fifties moved folks to town and working six days, changed to a five day work week, with forty regular hours and overtime.

I was just becoming of working age in the mid 70's, when the idea of a four day work week infiltrated our society. Of course, I didn't realize that was actually getting farther away from G-d's plan. It was presented as part of the plan to save the environment and not burn so much fuel, and I think fuel was at a premium then, like heading for 50 cents a gallon. These four day work weeks were still forty hours, though, four 10 hour days.

I didn't really realize until I began writing this how far we've come from G-d's Instruction for work. No wonder Sabbath's been forgotten. Now, we've even moved into the place where some professions work 3 twelve hour days that rotate days on/days off. I believe that is primarily in health care, so the excuse to work Sabbath is "iron-clad" in our society.

As we've moved farther and farther from G-d's plan of work and rest, we find our work hours to be insufficient to support the rest of what we value. The job creation theatrics in Washington are just that, theatrics, and the bottom line is, the more dependent people became upon the way the system began to work, the less the system worked and now the majority are asking the system to provide work.

Although I am not an advocate of greed, big business didn't single handedly kill the economy. The destruction of our economy was a symbiotic relationship of big business wanting more money with less capital outlay and the workers wanting more money with less time at the job.

YHWH's plan of a work week is quite different than our society has designed. The pay scale is different, the benefits are different, but the day of rest is always consistent. His economy doesn't deteriorate and the job itself carries no stress, so there is less need for leisure time and no need for a vacation.