Text: Genesis 2:4–5, 15
Topic: How to participate in work that matters

Introduction
• What would people in the Depression think of our term, TGIF (Thank God It's Friday)?
• Is there a way for us to feel thankful about work? Thank God It's Monday?

Work that matters
• God is a life-giver, and worked at the beginning of time to hurl color and light and form and beauty onto the canvas of the Universe.
• Genesis 1:1–25
• The purpose of Genesis is not necessarily to provide a scientific roadmap of Creation; rather it is to declare and affirm that God labored and blessed the stuff of the Universe.
• In Genesis, we discover work as God's way to express delight, affection, beauty, and most importantly, to bring forth life and call it good!

Work that's monstrous
• Exodus 1:8–14
• Work that is evil or forced can be monstrous, and opposes the life-giving properties of the work of God.
• Take a look at your life. Does your work matter, or is it monstrous?
• Left to our own devices, we twist and corrupt the good gift of daily work.

Work with a mission
• 1 Samuel 10:18
• God did not abandon the Israelites to their monstrous work; he liberated them.
• Just as God brings hope and new life into your personal life, he can do the same for your work life, too.
• Because God lives in you, you can be a source of hope and light where you work.