‘It was before the days of patent soaps and washing powders … There were no washing coppers, and the clothes had to be boiled in the big cooking pots over the fire. Often these inadequate vessels would boil over and fill the house with ashes and steam.’ That’s how it was not so long ago as captured in ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’ Things are different now. Not so many chores. More leisure time. But people still have to earn their living. They still go to work or WFH. And now women go to work just as men have always done.
But what we’re paid to do is not the only kind of work there is. Bringing up a family, looking after children, doing voluntary service for a charity or a church: these involve work, more exacting sometimes than a waged or salaried job. This was well understood in Candleford.
So what is it about work? Losing a job is a sad experience, whether in lockdown or otherwise. Does belief in God have anything to do with it? Mostly we recognise we are all in the same boat. Work is what we do. Whether we like it or not, we have to clock on. One question that does emerge is whether our work has anything to do with our calling. In 1 Corinthians 7.20 Paul says that when we turn to Christ we shouldn’t ‘try to change what we were.’ (CEV) If, e.g. we were a slave, we should be content with that (though if we could win our freedom, so much the better). ‘Calling’ for a Christian is something distinctive. It means being summoned out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2.9).
Well then, does God call us to particular occupations? Does he make it clear he wants us to be salesman, engineers or accountants? I remember a water-engineer who believed God had called him to be that. He went on to become a factory-inspector. The job we do is of secondary concern if we measure it against God’s primary calling, as Peter describes it. (Luther, I think, would not have agreed.) But it is desirable that we are able to take into account our talents, aptitudes and opportunities when we make a career decision. We have to accept that we may have to earn our living by doing a job we don’t particularly enjoy or actively dislike. Not often are we paid to do a job that we hugely enjoy. If we do, we are fortunate.
The general line we have to follow is clear: ‘Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.’ (1 Corinthians 10.31 Whether that is enjoyable or not, we have to get on with it.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
How long should a vicar stay in a parish? Seven years? That’s not unusual. Twenty-five years? Not so common. Tony Price was Vicar of St Nicholas’s, Marston, Oxford for 25 years and he weighs up the pros and cons (mostly pros) in an illuminating piece published on the church website.
Marston parish church aims to be an inside-out church. Once a month there is a 4 p.m. service outside the church followed by refreshments. And at 10.30 p.m. once a month there is a green service, again outside the church. The church also has an eco group refill station. The Vicar is Skye Danno. Marston is doubtless hoping she too will stay for 25 years.
MELLITUS GOLD
A gold shilling of Mellitus, first bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury, fetched £34,800 when it went for sale at a London auction house. A coin featuring Paulinus, the pre-Conquest evangelist and first Bishop of York, fetched £30,000. These coins are said to shine new light on the Anglo-Saxon shift from paganism to Christianity. ‘And did those feet …?’
WAKEFIELD WALK
Only once, as far as I can remember, have I taken part in a beating of the bounds. They say it is a practice dating back to Anglo-Saxon times, even back to Terminalia, the boundary festival of the Roman god Terminus. Never have I seen a better approach to the event than that provided by St John’s church, Wakefield. Parishioners can take part in a boundary prayer walk this coming Sunday; the rest of us can do it the easy way, by video. We start with the handsome Georgian parish church and gain some idea of the variety of housing and rural scenery in the area, thanks to the initiative of Martyn Lawson, churchwarden. Stephanie Buchanan is the Vicar.
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