A Job to Do
Our friend Darlene has never married. She is semi-retired now after working for about forty years at our local nursing home. She worked mainly in the laundry, but she spent much of her time being a personal blessing to the residents there. She continues to work part-time, cleaning our church building and the local funeral home.
Darlene is in the Sunday School class Ray teaches at our church on Sunday mornings. We often get to hear her stories during Sunday School. She recently told about how her family worked in the garden when she was growing up.
She said, “When one went, we all went.” By the time she was five years old, her parents were giving her a job that she could do. One job she didn’t like was picking up potatoes, but she did it.
As she told that story on a recent Sunday morning, I loved picturing little Darlene — she’s still little; I’m not sure she is even five feet tall — working with her family.
It is good for children to feel that their work is important, even at such a young age. We all, young and old, need to feel needed — not in some kind of make-work job, but really and truly needed. From the very beginning in the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam a job to do. We are wise if we give our children jobs to do, too.
Then the Lord God took the man
and put him in the Garden of Eden
to cultivate it and tend it.
Genesis 2:15