Labor Day is one of my favorite Holidays. For me, it marks the beginning of the fall season. Growing up in Wisconsin that meant beautiful, clear crisp mornings with the leaves changing color. It was the last hurrah before the winter months. It was a wonderful time for me to peacefully sit in the woods while squirrel hunting with my .22 rifle. In Florida, it means the hope of the miserably hot and humid days soon coming to an end. As I write this, there’s a little bit of fall feeling in the morning air. The effects of the summer heat come spinning toward us this time of year in the form of hurricanes. However, it won’t be long before we will have cooler, livable weather day after day.
Labor Day is also Pasty Day for us. I grew up in Benton, Wisconsin where everyone ate Cornish pasty. For those who are not familiar with this, it’s a meat and potato pie. The miners who immigrated from Cornwall, England settled wherever they could find employment doing what they knew how to do. Primarily they knew how to mine. I grew up in an area where lead and zinc were mined. We ate pasties. Cornish miners settled in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where they mined iron. Uppers eat pasty. A couple of years ago, we took a tour of a gold mine in Bisbee, Arizona. The tour guide told how most of the miners came from Cornwall, England. I asked if they ate pasty in Bisbee. He said, “We certainly do!”
In our village of Benton, the volunteer fire department raises money on Labor Day by hosting a pasty dinner. The pasties are donated by the households in town. At least, that’s what was always done when we lived there and I think that’s still what’s done. It was always a big fundraiser. Now, although we’ve lived in Florida for 34 years, Deb still makes pasty on Labor Day, and our family members, who live close by, come for lunch. It’s a wonderful tradition for us.
Labor Day was signed into law as a legal holiday by Congress on June 28, 1894. It was their attempt to settle massive unrest brought about by the labor movement and repair ties with American workers.
Celebrating labor certainly has its place. We need workers. They repair our cars, supply our food, build our homes, and much, much more. Unfortunately, work is too often only looked upon as being a curse. Especially physical work. That concept causes a lot of people to consider work as something evil. They work their whole life trying to avoid it. Often they spend their days looking forward to a day when they can retire and won’t have to work any longer.
Work is not a curse. When God put the first man in the Garden of Eden, everything was perfect. In that perfect environment, God gave the man work to do.
Genesis 2:15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
We don’t know what tending the garden involved. But we do know that the tasks gave the man a purpose. His purpose was to do the work God directed him to do.
Some will say work is a curse and try to prove it by quoting from Genesis 3:17, 18 & 19 when God told Adam;
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil, you shall eat of it
All the days of your life,
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread.
When man fell into sin, the whole world came under a curse. Prior to that fall, Adam and Eve ate freely from the fruit trees. After the fall, disease, and pestilence, weeds and thorns, began to compete with fruit trees and all edible plants. Suddenly, it became difficult to produce a harvest even though the original purpose of tending the garden was still in effect.
God didn’t tell Adam that working is a curse. He told Adam he had just made tending the garden a whole lot harder for himself.
Over and over the Bible commends work and condemns laziness. In fact, slothfulness is listed as one of the seven deadly sins.
King Solomon encourages us to keep working and not be lazy by saying, “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise.” Proverbs 6:6
The Apostle Paul had no sympathy for those not willing to work.
2 Thessalonians 3:10 "For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat."
One of the best instructions regarding life and work is 1 Thessalonians 4:11. "Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before."
On this Labor Day, I remind myself how thankful I am for work and for the physical ability to do work. I can’t do as much as I used to, but I can still do plenty. I’m also thankful for workers. They’re my kind of people.
So today, I weed-whacked all of our property, hung up a couple of planters for Deb, washed, dried, put away a load of towels, and celebrated Labor Day by eating lots of pasty with our family. Deb worked hard in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning up, and spent some quality time playing card games with some of our kids and grandkids. She also ate pasty.
Let’s remember to be thankful for the work we’ve been called to do and let’s thank the workers we encounter this week for all the work they are doing. Let's truly celebrate work and workers.
