[A ‘Tuesday Challenge‘ originally prepared for the congregation of Horley Baptist Church during August 2025]
What is the relationship between your spiritual life and your daily activities? Or, to put it another way, if your faith does not affect your lifestyle, your work-ethic and your politics, is it anything more than a hobby?
Hobbies can be valuable, encouraging mental acuity, manual skills and social interaction. They can require investment in terms of both time and resources but they can also be rewarding, giving us pleasure and satisfaction. However, hobbies are essentially temporal; they have no eternal consequences. Consider these words from the Sermon on the Mount:
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6 v19-21 [NRSVA]
Will there be hobbies in heaven? Could an eternity without green houses, knitting needles, exotic recipes or model railways really be heaven? What about those skills we have acquired through our hobbies?
The Bible has quite a lot to say about using our skills in God’s service. Right at the beginning we see that Adam was expected to tend the garden of Eden[1] and in the final chapter we see that everyone will be rewarded according to their work.[2] In the account of the preparation of the Tabernacle we read about Bezalel and Oholiab:
[The Lord] has filled them with skill to do every kind of work done by an artisan or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and in fine linen, or by a weaver – by any sort of artisan or skilled designer.
Exodus 35 v35 [NRSVA]
Later, when Solomon was building the Temple in Jerusalem he called upon the services of Huram, a skilled artisan in bronze, who oversaw the production of the furniture and artifacts in the Temple.[3] Although we now have neither Tabernacle nor Temple, our contemporary places of worship have furniture and artifacts that need care and maintenance. Our attitude towards these tasks can enhance or compromise our witness as Christians.
Teach me, my God and King, in all things Thee to see,
and what I do in anything, to do it as for Thee.
A servant with this clause makes drudgery divine;
who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, makes that and the action fine.
George Herbert (1633)
The apostle Paul supplemented but did not supersede the list of honourable activities.
And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues.
1 Corinthians 12 v28 [NIVUK]
Most of the roles that he identifies could not be carried out without the help of those people who willingly undertake the supporting tasks.
On Sunday Dennis wrote about the sin of procrastination.[4] Jesus too had something to say on the subject and we would do well to pay attention to his words:
We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work.
John 9 v4 [NLT]
Jesus himself was brought up in the household of a carpenter and would have been familiar with the skills of that trade. He had the ‘wrong’ skill-set for a life in public ministry and yet he changed the world.
Are you investing your skills on his behalf?
References:
[1] Genesis 2:15
[2] Revelation 22:12
[3] 1 Kings 7:13-14
[4] The Sin of ‘Not Now’
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © Steve Humphreys