Lesson 7 of 11 · Chapter: Glory

Glory in the Grit

Read time: about 7 minutes · Skill: seeing your work as priestly and God-glorifying

Lesson 6 said humility is how you lead. This lesson says what your work is actually for. And the surprise is that glory is not reserved for the grand. It is carried into the grimiest corners of your job, by image bearers whose every honest task is priestly worship.

The story that frames the chapter

A Chicago newspaper ran an unlikely headline: "City Tries to Pump Up Its Crews Down Under." It was a pep rally for eight hundred employees of the city sewer department. The new chief shouted, "Winning is not a sometimes thing; it's an all-time thing!" And on the wall behind him hung a huge banner with the goal of all that zeal: "Bringing Sewers Above Ground."

Whether you endorse the slogan or not, notice what it did. The moment those workers believed their smelly, hidden labor was actually crucial for a great city to function, they had enthusiasm for it. Chapell's point: God intends the very same zeal for your work, because it brings glory to him. The problem is that we rarely see how a spreadsheet, a shift, or a status meeting could carry any glory at all.

You were made for glory

The answer is not in the nature of the job but in the purpose of the person who does it. Genesis says humanity was made to mirror God:

The ancients call this the imago Dei, the image of God. We reflect him imperfectly, like a child pushing a toy mower behind his dad's real tractor, but the reflection is unmistakable. And we were told to fill the earth, to carry the features of God's glory into every place we inhabit and every job we do. Wherever image bearers work, they push back the darkness of a fallen world and bring God's glory to light. Even the most celebrated jobs have their sewer features: cleaning up messes, calming volatile bosses, filling out expense reports. Glory is not the absence of grit; it is the purpose that shines through it.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it plainly: "To lift up hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand or a woman with a slop pail gives him glory, too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean that they should." Luther agreed: when a father washes diapers in Christian faith, "God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling."

Glory takes the shape of neighbor-love

What does carrying God's glory actually look like at the office? Jesus answers with the second great commandment: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:39). Pastor-scholar Dan Doriani makes a claim worth underlining: work is the chief place where we love our neighbors. We pray "give us this day our daily bread," and God calls farmers, truck drivers, and cashiers to collaborate to bring it. We tend to think we feed the hungry only in a soup kitchen. That is shortsighted.

This is the same insight as the George Bailey test from Lesson 2: imagine the world without your job, and the neighbors your work serves come into view. The maintenance staff at a Kentucky middle school won a national podcast contest because eighth graders wanted to honor them: "We talked with lots of people about our maintenance staff and what they do every day... so we can do what we come here for." That perspective gives nobility to mopping halls and unclogging toilets. By our labors, communities thrive, lives are vitalized, families are blessed. That is glory.

Your desk is a sanctuary

Here is where the chapter lifts highest. Modern writers Matthew Kaemingk and Cory Willson recover an ancient idea: "All work, when done in faithful service to both God and neighbor, is a priestly act of worship... When workers enter the sanctuary, they don't arrive for a moment of worship; they've been engaged in priestly worship all week long."

It sounds foreign. Who imagines that writing emails, sweeping floors, or drafting contracts are priestly duties? Yet the early church fathers had a phrase for it: labore cum Deo, labor with God. Paul calls us "God's fellow workers" (1 Cor. 3:9). In ancient times the bread and wine on the communion table had come from ground worshipers had tilled, grain they had ground, ovens they had stoked. The work of priests and ordinary workers was interwoven in making God's glory known.

Chapell tells of a friend who manufactures adhesive products and had been discouraged by endless nuisance lawsuits from larger competitors. He had always seen his business mainly as a way to fund his church. Then a series of hurricanes revealed the truth: his adhesives were saving thousands of homes and relieving suffering for tens of thousands of families. Not price-gouging in a crisis displayed the character of God. Suddenly the products, not just the profits, were extending God's shalom, the peace his rule brings. And the lawsuits? Satan only bothers to attack those who threaten him. The resistance became strange affirmation of how significant his work really was.

You are on God's mission

This is why the sacred-secular divide has to go. God does not call all Christians to leave their profession and become missionaries. But he does give all Christians a missionary calling in their profession. Work and witness are intertwined in his purpose of taking his glory to every corner, closet, company, and nation. Twentieth-century theologian Lesslie Newbigin wrote that congregations must help laypeople "seek illumination from the gospel for their daily secular duty." That reflection, Chapell says, is the actual path of rescue from the daily grind that feels meaningless.

And the mission will succeed. When Jesus describes the final judgment, the righteous do not even recall doing great things (Matt. 25:37-40). A deed is counted great in heaven not by the impression it makes on earth, but by the one who is served by it. The Bible ends with a multitude "from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" around the throne (Rev. 7:9-10). The glory God planned, he completes through the daily work of ordinary believers. In the mundane and the magnificent, in the skilled work and the honest failures, God is extending his glory through you.

Make it real this week

Glory gets personal when you name the grit and the neighbor in your own job. These answers save in this browser.

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Where this is going

Glory asks what your work is for. But we must not be romantic. The next chapter turns to Evil, and Chapell calls it the most difficult chapter in the book. The same work designed to magnify God's glory is also a chief weapon in Satan's arsenal to wound you. Bosses demean, coworkers lie, the economy turns, and good people do terrible things. The apostle Peter's warning sets the tone: "Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you" (1 Pet. 4:12). Being forewarned is being forearmed.