Life in the cubicle farm

Genesis 3:17-19 NASB95.
17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
19 By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.”

Matthew 11:28 NASB95
28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

In contemporary America, the literal curse of the fall applies to few. In fact, only to those of us who make our living farming. But have the rest of us escaped it? Does trading the field for the factory floor or for the desk in a cubicle farm mean we don’t “earn our bread by the sweat of our face?”

For what have we traded fear of weather, insects, plant diseases, wolves, and bank foreclosures?

The cubicle farm and its relatives look wonderful; full of creature comforts, quiet and secure. At what cost?

The curse of the fall is not going to end just by entering another field of work. The air-conditioned cool of an office has its own sweaty labor and set of fears. Financial worries, unreasonable bosses and co-workers, an insecure economy. But even more so, we bring the curse of the fall with us.

You can take the sweaty farmer out of the field, but not the fearful and tired dirt farmer out of the cubical farmer. He (or she) is still inside each of us.

Jesus alone can lift the curse of the fall. Where we deserve the thorns and thistles of memos, meetings, and “voluntary separations,” He gives us His rest. Not rest from the labor, not while we are alive, but rest in the midst of the labor.

Ask and receive. He has promised it.