Although life does have its ups and downs overall, it is really just a daily grind, but we shouldn’t be surprised. After sin entered the world, God declared man’s effort to sustain life would be laborious.
Genesis 3:17–19 (ESV) — 17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
We may not be farming and directly involved with trying to grow our food, but there is enough in our daily labors that we feel the grind everyday of daily provision. No wonder God has given words of comfort and instruction in handling our labors or “toil,” as it is sometimes called. Consider a few:
Proverbs 14:23 (ESV) — 23 In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.
Proverbs 21:25 (ESV) — 25 The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.
Proverbs 23:4 (ESV) — 4 Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist.
Ecclesiastes 5:12 (ESV) — 12 Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.
Notice that the principle of labor or toil is part of the curse brought about by sin. Nevertheless, God provides instruction and even makes way for rest in the midst of the daily grind.
Deuteronomy 5:12–15 (ESV) — 12 “ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
God knew from the beginning, even before sin entered the world, that man would have a tendency to go overboard and not allow for periods of needed rest, so God established the Sabbath in the midst of the creation week. He then established it as a command as seen in the Ten Commandments. It is so important for man to rest from his labors that God commands it. Do we take heed and rest? Most people don’t. If they aren’t laboring in the daily grind, they find other work that only takes them to further exhaustion on days when they could and should be finding their God given rest. No wonder then, people look at the seven-day week as merely the “daily grind.”
Perhaps the Bible has another solution in the attention that the prophet Isaiah brought up that we often neglect the refreshment God has for us because we labor for things that will never satisfy us.
Isaiah 55:1–2 (ESV) — 1 “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
One of the ways we find refreshment or contentment is to get off the “daily grind” of life and seek to find the rest that only God can give, in which we rest in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ in salvation, and rest upon the commandments of God as good for us so we rest instead of resisting His call to rest in Him and His word. It’s interesting how we find the call to labor or strive to enter into His rest. It takes an effort to get of the “toil train” and cease from our own efforts as we rely upon God to provide.
Hebrews 4:9–11 (ESV) — 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Life can be a “daily grind,” but if we are willing to take God and His word seriously, we also find the needed rest and rejuvenation along the way.
Godspeed,
Bob Brubaker
