Your family is your work, and your delight

Ever heard someone say... "because of work, I have little time for family?"

Amongst pastors, ever read one of those book dedications where the author apologises to his family for neglecting them whilst he worked at it? The most "memorable" one such I ever read was at the front of a book on holiness...

According to God, a man's family is his work. You can't neglect your family in favour of your work any more than you can neglect your health for the good of your body, or omit to brush your teeth whilst pleasing your dentist.

I find this thought a big help because the temptation comes to all men. We've started a task or twenty tasks, and then comes an "interruption" - another one! - from family. "How will I ever get the work done", the man wonders. Remembering that the "interruption" is itself his work - his God-given appointment, his holy calling in God's earth - helps us get over mental hurdles. Ultimately God appoints every task we have, and if he's now called us away from one to the other, what is the problem? Is it not right that he sets the schedules, not us?

And if we think Biblically, then the work which earns our daily bread is of much less true value than the work which bequeaths godly people to the world to serve it. A great career might earn you a stack of cash and a gold retirement trinket at the end (though we trust you also fulfilled your God-given vocation to his glory on the way!). All this is left behind at last. But your family can be a real gift to the world that lasts and lasts - to a thousand generations! Even if your "career" is spreading the Word, ultimately no convert or student can be influenced by you to influence the world like your family can.

Once we are set free from the tyranny of the secularist belief that work is real life and family is an often-unaffordable luxury, we are set free to delight in one of God's greatest treasures and pleasures. I ran some running races after tea against my eldest today. A simple pleasure, but worth more than words can express and more than can be counted in money. Smiles, fellowship, a bond strengthened in a simple way; it's an investment where you can't see the worth growing by observing anxiously, but whose worth is obvious to all with eyes in the end. At times, and often, it takes faith to measure the value of patiently persevering with all the trials of daily life in a family; but the rewards of a Christian family are abundant in this life as well as the life to come.

Interupt work for family? Interupt work for a glorious work, and a true delight.