Behold, you are of no account and your work amounts to nothing; He who chooses you is an abomination. Isaiah 41:24
I was just turned down for a job. The interview went extremely well, I thought. My hopes were raised, though I was scared as everything about actually getting it. It is in my field of study, somewhat. It matched my skill set, somewhat. It got me thinking and dreaming, developing thoughts and activities, studies and programs, to make the performance of the job wonderful. And it is now a memory and those plans just aren't going to happen. Ever, probably. So now what? I keep doing what I am doing. That is good in some ways and not so good in others.
This verse does not summarize my life right now, though Satan would love to use it against me. I am following the Lord, doing what He calls me to do where He is calling me to do it. I have free time to give. I have a flexibility in my schedule that not many others have. But this is where the rubber meets the road.
God is speaking here to those who work, who build, who create against His will. They were crafting idols and seeking guidance from them. You are the idol-makers, and He is the idol. They did a bang-up job (play on words for the hammering of the metal they were smelting in the early part of the chapter) making these things. They crafted and worked hard to make these things. But it was all for nothing. Or worse than nothing. It turned God's back on them. He pleads with them to turn, and knowing they wouldn't, He was going to send an army, a leader from another country, to send them into repentance mode. It seemed that that is what it always took...a real beating from God, to turn their heads back in the right direction. Even later on in verse 29, God repeats Himself. You did all this work for nothing. They were as empty as wind, emptiness, and confusion, depending on your translation.
There are few people on earth who don't want their work to account for something. Anything. People will stand on assembly lines day after day to get a paycheck, but at least they know that the part they play is a necessary one. That screw needs tightened, or the car won't hold together. The burrs need polished off, the paint applied, the tubing connected. It is all for a purpose - to make something that will make someone else happy, get them somewhere, or make their life easier. People paint pictures to arouse emotions. We make hats and blankets and clothes to provide for a need. Those who go crazy or lose hope are like those in the concentration camps who were forced to move wheelbarrows of dirt back and forth across the grounds. There was no purpose in it. It was forced "work" and torturously mean. This work may have kept the body strong, or forced it into weakness from malnutrition, but if the people doing it didn't assign it some purpose in their minds, it drove them to anger, resentment, and hopelessness. God said that if we make our own gods, our own task-list, we will be empty, our works will be futile, and we will have wasted our lives and angered Him.
So right now I sit and wonder what to do next. This must be that empty-nest syndrome they talk about. No one here to care for (hubby, yes, and I do), but the daily work that had meaning in the days of a full house now seem empty and mundane. And I HAVE TO remind myself that God has numbered my days and given them purpose beyond the doing of life. If I am where He wants me, doing and being what He wants, then my works are not empty. But I have to look at them as God's assignments. My last is in year 3 of college, and many of the assignments she has may not seem to serve the purpose of achieving the goal she has set for her life, but they are still a part of the process of getting there. How sitting here with sewing machines, fabric, and being still and alone will get me closer to being like Christ I have yet to see. I have the time to do Bible studies, pray, listen to sermons and hymns and be still with God. I have to keep my longings here and learn to focus on Him and have that not only be enough, but to be everything. Love, joy, peace, patience, faithfulness. I need to be filled. You cannot drive the car and fill it with gas at the same time. Not that my goal is to stay at the pump and do nothing. It's not to sit in the driveway full. But like my car, it gets sent out when there is something to be accomplished. God is the driver, not me. He will drive me when He wants, as often as He wants, and as far as He wants. I need to just be at His service. So for now I sit in anticipation of His use of me, steering me in the direction He wants me to go. The car does not make that choice. And I have to be ok with that. I am learning to be ok with not being the doer, but the vehicle. I always have been, but it takes us so long to relinquish control for us humans.
Do you feel like me today? Do you want your works to be more than wind and emptiness? Let all things be done by Him through you. Don't make something else your god, forging it in the fires of hard work, only to find out we were serving the work instead of the great Creator. God just calls us in these verses to look to Him and not fear, to be His and not give ourselves to another. "I am thine, O Lord, and I heard thy voice..." says the old hymn. And I am still listening.
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