Review: Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work

January 23, 2014January 23, 2014 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work by Timothy Keller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What do you think might happen if you could persuade those who follow Christ to give 40 to 60 hours of their best time to the advance of God’s purposes in the world? That is what Timothy Keller wants to do in his book Every Good Endeavor. The subtitle of his book is “Connecting Your Work to God’s Work” and what he wants to do is help us understand how work is integral to what it means to be made in the image of God. Work is not “the curse”, although human rebellion against God manifests itself in work that can be difficult, conflictual or even futile. Yet the work of Christ is to bring “new creation” even into our work. That, in a nutshell, is the outline of the book.

What makes this such a helpful book is the combination of theology carefully developed from the biblical text interlaced with wonderful illustrations of these truths from both the worlds of literature and the arts (I loved his examples of Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle” and of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme),and from the business and professional world.

Among the chapters in this book, I found several I particularly appreciated. His exploration of “work as cultivation” explored the idea of work’s intrinsic value as a culture-making activity. So often, I’ve been in circles that treat work as an evil necessity that must be gotten out of the way to get to more “spiritual” pursuits. Keller demonstrates how this is a Greek, rather than Christian ideal. He also explores how work reveals our idols, whether we come from traditional, modern, or post-modern settings. Finally, I found his chapter “A New Power for Work” to be encouraging both for it recognition of the work of God’s Spirit empowering our work and igniting our passion, and the important place of rest or sabbath, in our life rhythms of work and rest.

The book is co-authored with Katherine Leary Alsdorf, director of Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New York’s Center for Faith and Work. The book concludes with a description of this center’s work in the field of marketplace discipleship that could be a model for other churches committed to releasing the energies and gifting of their people in the area of life to which they probably give more of their waking hours than any other, their work.

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A Love Supreme

Unfinished Work

A Love Supreme

January 21, 2014 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

There is a small difference between making work our God and loving God through our work. So says Tim Keller in his book Every Good Endeavor. In the former, work becomes a cruel taskmaster. In the other, our work can be one more expression of love. One of Keller’s illustrations of the latter is John Coltrane’s groundbreaking album, A Love Supreme, released in 1964.

Coltrane, in the liner notes to this album, writes:

During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.

As time and events moved on, a period of irresolution did prevail. I entered into a phase which was contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path; but thankfully, now and again through the unerring and merciful hand of God, I do perceive and have been duly re-informed of His OMNIPOTENCE, and of our need for, and dependence on Him. At this time I would like to tell you that NO MATTER WHAT … IT IS WITH GOD. HE IS GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL. HIS WAY IS IN LOVE, THROUGH WHICH WE ALL ARE. IT IS TRULY – A LOVE SUPREME – .

I was inspired by Keller to pick up a copy (found one second hand at Half Price Books!) and was delighted to discover this jazz classic written as an act of worship, but also a consummate piece of music in which Coltrane is joined by McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.

One of the delightful things about this work is that this act of worship is also a work of excellence. This seems fitting, that works of love are works that delight and works of excellence. It seems we often look for work that we love and struggle when it is frustrating. What if instead work were something done to express our love, as was Coltrane’s work? How might that make a difference?

Unfinished Work

January 17, 2014January 15, 2014 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

I hate not finishing things! I rarely leave a book unfinished. I don’t like to leave food on the plate. And I like to finish a job that I start. Yet one of the things I’ve become increasingly conscious of as I get older is that some of the things I’ve dreamed of–whether my dreams for campus work, for our organization, or for the impact of Christian thought in the part of the world where I live–I will likely live to see only glimmers of the things I’ve dreamed of. Until the end of history and the return of Jesus, the day comes for each of us where we lay down our work, and ultimately our life in this world–always with things undone, always with more that we know could be done.

I think of great “unfinished” works of music. There are Schubert’s Eighth Symphony, Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, and Edward Elgar’s Third. What must it have been like for those composers to have music in mind that was never realized on a score?

I’ve just begun reading Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor. In one of the early chapters he recounts the little story J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, Leaf by Niggle that tells the story of an artist, Niggle, who has a vision of a scene with a beautiful tree in the center. Try as he might, Niggle can never capture the whole tree, only one very perfect leaf. Then Niggle goes on the long journey of death until he comes to a place where he sees the tree of his vision and realizes that his creation was part of a much larger Creation of a greater Creator. Keller notes that this story was written at a time when Tolkien doubted that he would ever complete Lord of the Rings, and that Tolkien was in fact Niggle!

J.R.R. Tolkien

Keller draws from this the idea that for the Christian, in the words of 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (NIV) Paul’s hope was not that our work would be complete in this life, but that there would be a resurrection to a new creation, where somehow our creations would carry over into the final Creation.

What that says to me is that the prospect of unfinished work need not be a cause for despair. Our work will matter and somehow we will see the realization in some purified form of our deepest hopes and dreams. And so I can keep giving myself to pressing toward those goals, to pursuing the good, the beautiful, and the true. I don’t need to finish because my trust is in the one who said, “It is finished.”