All Your Might

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I came across a quote today.  I was already familiar with it, and probably you are as well, but it sprang out at that moment because I happened to be thinking about working on projects I didn't want to be working on; I was, in fact, pretty actively procrastinating - if that is even possible.  So the quote was very pointed indeed.

whatever your hand finds to do, 

do it with all your might.

ecclesiastes 9:10

Granted, the Preacher was not exactly a cheery fellow; judging from the whole of Ecclesiastes, and from scholars' arguments in favor of Solomon being the author, it appears that he was a world-weary and perhaps God-starved man looking at life through jaded eyes.  His proverbs tend to be negative; the full verse quoted above reads, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."  Not particularly bright and sunshiny.  It sounds almost like Russian literature.

And yet it is nonetheless true, and for a much more glorious reason than the Preacher brought out.  Another quote sprang to mind as I read this one:

so, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

first corinthians 10:31

The two verses mesh; they complement each other.  The Preacher, world-weary and God-starved as he may have been, was yet a wise man: it is true that whatever our hands find to do, we ought to do with all our might.  But not merely because we will eventually no longer be able to do it.  We put our might into these things for a greater reason; we have a higher goal, we march to a more joyful beat.  And that reason, that goal, that beat, is the glory of God.

It is not only our duty, but our greatest good and, we hope and pray, our greatest happiness to glorify God.  We were made to glorify Him.  What does the catechism say?  "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever," or, as some would rephrase it, "...to glorify God by enjoying Him forever."  This is an ongoing, lifelong, daily process, worked out in our most common actions - in our praise and prayer and meditation, and also in our work and our rest.  I Corinthians and Ecclesiastes can be put together, I think, because whatever our hands find to do, we do it with all our might for the glory of God.  

Most of us on this block of the blogosphere are writers.  Some are published; some aren't.  Some are treated by acquaintances as though "writer" were synonymous with "lazy bum."  In this context, I don't think it really matters.  The point is that, no matter what stage of life we are in, no matter the praise or disapprobation of others, we must do what we do with all our might.  If we're putting our hand to this plow - to any plow - we aren't meant to look back.  To co-op a third and totally extra-biblical quote, we shouldn't know how to dabble in things we should be earnestly pursuing.  Perhaps "dabble" shouldn't be a word in the Christian's vocabulary at all.  Labor and perseverance, prayer and praise - those are words much better suited to us.

kudos if you know the reference of that third quote