Day 64: Living Daily in Reality: Work of Getting or Giving
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So you are here for the Creator’s son to complete his Father’s creation
through you. In this process both you and the planet will yield to his
will for them – even though it may only be completed in the cataclysm
foreshadowed in Paul’s statement that the “world is crucified to me and I
to the world”. This enigma is becoming more understandable as our quantum
physicists point to the possibility of some kind of parallel universe
where time and space are relative.

The same truth was revealed in the Biblical letter to the Ephesians in 64
A.D. – “for we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good
works which God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them”.
Your work is not the slavish, unpleasant toil we have made it by our
atheism – “in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”. It is the
glorious work that your Maker has given you to “be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth and subdue it”. The way you multiply and are fruitful
and fill the earth and subdue it will be different from everyone else
because you are unique: you are here for your Maker’s son to be and do
something that he is and does in no other human-being that has ever lived.

All of us have sensed at times an intuitive urge which we usually
attribute to something like conscience or heredity and most of us have
experienced a strength that seems to come from somewhere other than
ourselves, so the fact that our maker’s son is within us does not seem
impossible. Moreover all of us have found that we face two strong urges
if we see someone drowning – an urge to dive in and save – but also an
urge not to risk our own lives. This is the meaning and purpose of our
existence and the works we are given to do – either we let God’s Son live
in us or we crucify him and become his enemy.

Because of our self-centredness we easily misinterpret Christ’s spirit
within us as our socially formed conscience or we see our desire to avoid
danger as simply self-preservation, but our nature becomes increasingly
warped out of shape until it is utterly carnal and dominated by the world
around us. The enemy outside overcomes the friend inside so that we
cannot do the good we want, but instead do what we do not want. The more
we struggle to free ourselves, the more we sink in our own selfishness.
Only our Maker’s son within us can free us by his activity!

Broadly speaking, the works we face expose our dominant desire to get and
offer us the chance to let Christ give. So our choice of a career exposes
our desire to get and provides a chance to give. If we are practical
atheists we are committed to providing the food, clothes and shelter
which we’ll need in this life, so money is an important factor in our
career plans. If we are practical theists we’ll be preoccupied with what
we can give to the world. As we pursue our training and our career our
nature becomes increasingly warped out of shape or becomes increasingly

shaped by the spirit of our Creator within us – while our needs are met
incidentally along with many of our wants.

The results in our world are evident in times like the 2008 recession –
bankers who are meant to keep people’s money safe and lend it to others
at reasonable interest become preoccupied with getting more and more
money along with investment bankers who are meant to finance businesses
so that more jobs and incomes are created. So the development and
subduing of the world that Christ in us is here to do doesn’t occur;
instead, the world’s resources are diminished and stocked away unused by
the few who accumulate them. Thus the acquisitive nature dominates
families and nations so that greed and anxiety and frustration take hold
of men’s hearts and minds. The result is a society and world that becomes
increasingly comatose and moribund and lacks the lively activity of the
Maker’s son and his brothers and sisters.

It all starts or turns around with you and me.