Sermon quotes on work
Douglas Adams
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
Maya Angelou
Nothing will work unless you do.
Thomas A. Edison
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Sam Ewing
Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.
Timothy Keller
Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a true reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever.
Timothy Keller
Work is so foundational to our makeup that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm. Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and rest six or that work and rest should be balanced evenly but directs us to the opposite ratio. Leisure and pleasure are great goods, but we can take only so much of them.
Martin Luther King Jr.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
C.S. Lewis
Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self—in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.
George Macdonald
It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity.
Mother Teresa
We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.
George Bernard Shaw
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
Bob Woodward
All good work is done in defiance of management
John Donne
Let no man be disheartened nor discouraged if he have brought a good conscience and faithful labor to the service of the Lord. Let him not think his wages the worse paid if God do mingle bodily sickness, temporal losses, personal disgraces, with his labors. Let him not think that God should not do thus to them that wear out themselves in his service for the best part of our wages is adversity, because that gives us a true fast and a right value of our prosperity. The prophet Jeremiah had it; the best of his rank must.
Anonymous Citizen of Guina-Bissau
When I don’t have any [food to bring my family], I borrow, mainly from neighbors and friends. I feel ashamed standing before my children when I have nothing to help feed the family. I’m not well when I’m unemployed. It’s terrible.
Gordon T. Smith
The huge assumption of our social context is that work is bad and leisure is good. Our only hope for a transformed vision for vocation, work and career, and for navigating the transitions of life, is to engage our world with a theological vision for good work—to redeem the very idea of work.
Taken from Courage and Calling by Gordon T. Smith. ©2011 by Gordon T. Smith. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
Gordon T. Smith
We talk about our work all the time. It is rare that a conversation with a person we have recently met does not at some point lead to the inevitable question, What do you do? by which we mean, how do you spend your life and days. What is the work that this person does, that, ideally, God has given him or her to do?
Taken from Courage and Calling by Gordon T. Smith. ©2011 by Gordon T. Smith. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
Klaus Issler
Of the thirty-seven parables in the Synoptic Gospels, thirty-two mention some form of work-related activity as part of the storyline.
“Examining Jesus’ Inclusion of Work Roles in His Parables,” Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, accessed February 10, 2017.
Robert Frost
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
Bertrand Russell
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
Edgar Bergen
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
Robert Townsend
If you don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead, look at any office at quitting time.
Bob (Paul Wilson) and Peter (Ron Livingston),
Bob: “Looks like you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.”
Peter: “I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob.”
Office Space
Diana Butler Bass
Our bodies move to a rhythm of work and rest that follows the rhythm originally strummed by God on the waters of creation. As God worked, so shall we; as God rested, so shall we. Working and resting, we who are human are in the image of God.
A.J. Swoboda
To image God is to work and rest as God worked and rested.
A.J. Swoboda
Our modern dogma is that of Batman: “It’s not who you are underneath . It’s what you do that defines you.
Abraham Heschel
Labor is not only the destiny of man; it is endowed with divine dignity.
Anne Wilson Schaef
When we insist on doing too much, we are not only inflicting the damage of this choice on ourselves, we are sharing this damage with those we love the most.
The Wall Street Journal
The good news is, you’re always connected to the office.
The bad news is, you’re always connected to the office.
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A.W. Tozer
Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.
John Mark Comer
One study found that there was zero difference in productivity between workers who logged seventy hours and those who logged fifty-five.
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, The Crown Publishing Group, 2019.
Cotton Mather
Religion begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother.
Ashley Hales
Underneath our frantic pace is a question: Is this work I do good enough?
Taken from Finding Holy in the Suburbs: Living Faithfully in the Land of Too Much by Ashley Hales Copyright (c) 2009 by Ashley Hales. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Dave Lomas
But here’s the truth: what we do is not the truest thing about us. Building our identity on the foundation of what we do creates an identity that can crack or break or tumble down at any moment.
The Truest Thing about You: Identity, Desire, and Why It All Matters (David C Cook, 2014).
Thomas Merton
If we want to be spiritual, then let us first of all live out lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed for us by the will of God. Let us embrace reality and thus find ourselves immersed in the life-giving will and wisdom of God which surrounds us everywhere.
Martin Luther
Work and let him give the fruits therefore! Rule, and let him prosper it! Battle, and let him give victory! Preach, and let him make hearts devout!”
Ken Costa
It is estimated the average person will spend 150,000 hours at work in his or her lifetime. That translates to roughly 40 percent of our lives being spent at work. That’s a lot. As a result, our work, our jobs, and how we spend the majority of our time are very important to God.
T. Boone Pickens
I always say, ‘work eight hours, sleep eight hours — be sure they’re not the same eight hours’
Office Space
Bob Porter (Paul Willson): “Looks like you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.“
Peter (Ron Livingston ): “I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob.”
Office Space (1999)
Dorothy Sayers
We cannot deal with industrialism or unemployment unless we lift work out of the economic, political and social spheres and consider it also in terms of the work’s worth and the love of the work, as being in itself a sacrament and a manifestation of man’s creative energy.
The Mind of the Maker, Harper Collins, 1941, 1987, 218.
Ron Rolheiser
We know God not just in our conscious awareness and in prayer, but also in a deep inchoate way, by participating with Him in building this world – by growing things, building things, carving things, creating things, cleaning things, painting things, writing things, raising children, nursing bodies, teaching others, consoling others, humouring others, struggling with others, and loving others. Work, like prayer, is a privileged way to get to know God because, when we work, we are toiling in partnership with Him.
“The Sacredness of Work,” ronroheiser.com (June 4, 2006)
Tom Nelson
Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a paycheck, because fruitfulness is about cultivating blessing from the created order. Fruitfulness means adding value and bestowing honor to others in and through our work. Fruitfulness is building up and utilizing our capacity for influence, access, and wealth so we might tangibly express our neighborly love. We may retire from our paycheck, but we never retire from work. We never retire from the privilege and responsibility of neighborly love.
Office Space
Bob Porter (Paul Willson): “Looks like you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.“
Peter (Ron Livingston ): “I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob.”
Office Space (1999)
Victor Claar
Work supplies the physical, psychological, artistic, and religious needs of communities extending to the ends of the earth. Furthermore, through work, we create abundance out of which we help meet the needs of others.
Ron Rolheiser
We know God not just in our conscious awareness and in prayer, but also in a deep inchoate way, by participating with Him in building this world – by growing things, building things, carving things, creating things, cleaning things, painting things, writing things, raising children, nursing bodies, teaching others, consoling others, humouring others, struggling with others, and loving others. Work, like prayer, is a privileged way to get to know God because, when we work, we are toiling in partnership with Him.
“The Sacredness of Work,” ronroheiser.com (June 4, 2006)
Timothy Keller
Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality; it is not simply medicine but food.
Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work (Penguin, 2014).
Katelyn Beaty
Every human being is made to work. And since women are human beings, every woman is made to work.
Albert Einstein
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
The World as I See It (Philosophical Library, 1940)
Ralph Ransom
Before the reward there must be labor. You plant before you harvest. You sow in tears before you reap joy.
Steps on the Stairway (Bantam, 1983)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
Strength to Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1963)
Theodore Roosevelt
It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
The Key to Success in Life (1916)
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