The Wheel: A Metaphor for Connecting our Daily Work and Our Faith
The wheel, one mankind’s earliest inventions, provides wonderful insight on the way we connect our daily work with our faith in God. While wheels come in all materials and styles, there are some common characteristics, and our discussion will focus on some simple features captured in this picture of an old wagon wheel.
Characteristic of most wheels, this picture shows the hub at the center, a number of spokes connecting the hub with the frame of the wheel, and the round shape of the rim enabling it to roll down the road.
We will develop several ways this pictures the way our daily lives are connected to God.
The hub is at the center, and for those of us who follow Jesus, we want God at the center of our lives. The spokes may represent the different tasks we have throughout the day. The task that is current is the one directly under the hub, connecting with the point on the wheel that is touching the ground. When done well, this suggests that for each task, God is over that particular task. We will develop this further. The arrangement of the spokes may represent our own planning for the day, ideally done in conjunction with God. Yet when God is given authority in our lives, that extends to allowing him to rearrange the spokes. The relationship between planning and executing the plan is also under his control.
To develop each of these cases, we need to know a bit more about the wheel itself. As engineers, we take a brief detour into the physics of the wheel before developing these cases.
The Spoke and the Hub
We can readily imagine a wheel with no spokes or hub, pictured here as a child rolls a tire down the street.
This is fine with a relatively strong tire and without the weight of a vehicle on top. But when the pressure comes, the wheel collapses.
There are examples of a wheel with a single spoke, for example this steering wheel.
The challenge here also is that this wheel is not subject to the forces on the rim that would be present if it were carrying the weight of the car.
Wheels with two spokes can be used on bicycles as in this picture. To make this work requires significant strength in the wheel itself; note the thickness of the rim and the required strength of the material of the wheel in order to carry the load of the rider. The forces on the rim are all distributed through the wheel, particularly when neither spoke is close to the point of contact of the wheel. Without this strength, the wheel would flatten.
Yet most wheels, like the wagon wheel pictured at the top, have many spokes to distribute the load on the rim by keeping some spoke near the point of contact of the wheel at any given position.
What does all this have to say about the Christian life?
Quite a lot!
For too many Christians, the spokes relate to the Sunday dose of Christianity while the rest of the week is relying on our own strength in the wheel. Some willingly add another spoke at the beginning or the end of the day through personal devotions. But these doses of input into the spiritual life are rarely enough to sustain us through the activities of the day. There is another problem here. When our spiritual input is so separated from our work lives, we may fall in the trap of believing that those daily tasks are up to us—they are in a different part of our lives we may think of as secular, not connected to our spiritual world. It is no wonder our lives go flat.
Let’s look at this process in a task by task setting next, and then address the organization of the tasks.
Living Out Our Daily Tasks
The Bible has a great deal to say about our daily work. Both of us have a long association with the Theology of Work Project (www.theologyofwork.org), where we have a document for every book of the Bible on what it has to say about daily work. We are called to be people of wholeness, people of integrity, where every aspect of life us under the Lordship of Christ. When we truly walk in this way, it means life is not divided into a spiritual part and an ordinary part; all of life is spiritual. Thus everything we do is done in reference to God’s call on our lives.
This takes us to the picture of the wheel. Each task as we move through life, as the wheel rolls down the road, can be thought of as that task of the moment that needs to be carried out under God. This affects everything about that task. God gives it purpose and meaning, God gives us the power and insight to carry it out, God calls us to learn from it. As we encounter relationships in the execution of the task, we are to be reminded that we are representing God in this work. Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven,” Matthew 5:18. We note that Jesus did not limit this instruction to what we might call “spiritual” deeds.
Further, it is through our work that God forms us spiritually. Eugene Peterson said, I’m prepared to contend that the primary location for spiritual formation is the workplace.”[1] Even when the work is difficult. We see a vivid picture of this in the life of Joseph, where the person that emerges from prison to stand before Pharaoh in Genesis 41 is very different from the person who told his family about his dreams in chapter 37. He had been shaped by 13 years in slavery and in prison, hard work indeed.
Resources
What can we do to maintain this link with our daily work in the midst of the noise and pressures we encounter each day?
Two of many books might be helpful. In Workplace Discipleship 101, David Gill[2] outlines workplace practices that keep our work at the center of our spiritual lives. He starts with
commitment, being intentional about making work a theme of our walk with Christ
prayer, going beyond personal and family life to include the work we are called to do
listening, asking God to speak with us about work through Jesus and the Scripture
partnering, seeking other believers to walk with you and hold you accountable
learning, about your work and how it connects to God’s purpose for you
The second is Working in the Presence of God: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Work by Denise Daniels and Shannon Vanderwarker[3]. They outline practical steps you can take at various places in your workday, from the start of the commute to an assessment at the end of the day, to help you be reminded and disciplined in bringing God into various aspects of your work.
Sometimes the church can also be helpful, though unfortunately most churches are not intentional about connecting your faith with your daily work. Neil Hudson, in his book Imagine Church: Releasing Whole Life Disciples, shows what church could (and sometimes does) look like in supporting its congregation with this task.
Applications
Some believe that bringing the various tasks of daily life under God’s power is primarily for when you are in trouble. You’ve missed a deadline, you have a difficult colleague or boss, or you are stuck with a major assignment you don’t know how to do. Of course, it is important to bring these things to God. But it is also important to engage with God in those assignments you believe you know how to do, or at times of great success. The Scriptures offer many examples of people who engaged God in their work in the difficult times, only to fall in times of success when they believed they were in control. One example of this is Uzziah whose story is told in 2 Chronicles 26. He was an inventor, a military leader, a business person and a king, “But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God.” (v. 16)
Some believe this is only for the big things of life, not the little things. Joseph connected with God in revealing to Pharaoh what his dreams meant, and went beyond the meaning to a detailed strategy of what to do. We don’t know whether he went to God about what to do when the people ran out of money in purchasing grain, but that is also important. Yes, even in little things God is engaged with us, and we need to acknowledge that engagement. Jesus reminded us of the importance of the little things when he said, “One who is faithful in very little I also faithful in much…” Luke 16:10.
Finally, we need to be reminded that the wheel should not be rolling all the time. From creation we see that God rested on the seventh day, and we also need a time of rest. When we rest on our bicycle, for example, the weight is born by the hub suggesting rest in God. In the fourth commandment we are told, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, six days you shall work.” So God modeled this rhythm of work and rest, he made us to follow it, and we avoid this to our peril.
The idea of resting has another application. In Genesis 2, when God rested on the seventh day, this is the only one of the creation days where the text does not add, “There was evening and there was morning.” It is as if God has opened a way of bringing rest even in the daily tasks of life, when these things are done in His strength. Perhaps that is what the writer to the Hebrews meant when he says, “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands…” Hebrews 4:1.
Organizing Our Work
The wheel provides yet a different model on carrying out our work under God’s leadership. It is more than the individual tasks, but the planning of the tasks themselves. We can think of it as the ordering of the spokes as the wheel goes down the road.
Jesus reminded his disciples to count the cost of discipleship likening it to the planning of building a tower. He said,
Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ Luke 14: 28-30
And Proverbs 29 reminds us, “Without a vision, the people perish.” This planning stage is also under God’s guidance.
But things don’t always go as planned.
Joseph laid out a 14-year plan to deal with the coming harvest in Genesis 41. But along the way came some unanticipated issues. More grain was collected than had been anticipated. He had some surprising visitors who came for food (his brothers who had sold him into slavery). And the people ran out of money to purchase grain. Adaptation was required.[4]
James reminds us to hold our plans lightly. He states,
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. James 14:18-20
Sometimes God chooses to reorder these spokes, or drop in new ones. To truly do this work under God’s guidance calls on us to be willing to plan, and willing to change.
In addition to adaptation, sometimes we are called on to change directions, and too often we see these as interruptions. C. S. Lewis provides an important perspective on these:
“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.”[5]
Priority vs Centrality
All of us struggle with what we call work-life balance. Part of the problem is the use of the word priority with reference to the place of God in our lives. In this linear model, God comes at the top and the various other aspects of our daily life – church, work, family, leisure etc. – come (rightly) below God. The problem that all of us frequently face is the inter-priority between the other legitimate responsibilities that we carry. Work-life balance is a misleading term because it separates work from life when work is a part of life. A few examples: When do I stay late in the office work on a particular day and not take out the family for dinner? When and how do I convince my boss that I need a break from work so that I can take the family for a holiday? How do I convince my Pastor that I may have to miss a Sunday service because of the extra workload at the office?
By adopting and developing a mindset of the centrality of God according to the wheel model, Christians relate every aspect of life to God which will necessarily involve a dialogical style of life with family, boss, pastor etc. that they begin to see the part God plays in one’s life; if the boss is not a Christian, God’s centrality will have to be communicated to the boss winsomely and not dogmatically. While it is not suggested that the wheel model will solve the problem automatically but it may go a long way to alleviating it. It will also help the marketplace Christian to make sure that every aspect of her/his life is focused on God and the secular/sacred divide which is commonplace among Christians is progressively got rid of.
Conclusion
The wheel provides a helpful metaphor for thinking about carrying out the tasks of our work under God. All work is sacred. While some believe they are strong enough to get by with the occasional spoke, (that is, to connecting personally and through our church with God and handle the daily work ourselves) we are not. The model extends to doing the planning for our work while being open to adaptation and redirection.
Fortunately, wheels are everywhere: on the cars, buses, or trains when we go to and from work, often on the office chairs and the factory vehicles, on toys and lawn equipment. When we get the picture firmly in mind, we will encounter wheels everywhere, serving as a reminder. Philosopher Albert Borgman talks about the importance of focal practices, those external things that act as a reminder of God active in our world.[6]
Every time we look at a wheel we can see a focal reminder of God in our work
[1] Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 127
[2] Workplace Discipleship 101: A Primer, David W. Gill, Hendrickson, 2020.
[3] Working in the Presence of God: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Work, Denise Daniels and Shannon Vanderwarker, Hendrickson, 2019.
[4] The Accidental Executive: Lessons on Business, Faith, and Calling from the Life of Joseph, Albert Erisman, Hendrickson, 2015, chapters 17, 18, 25.
[5] from a 1943 letter from C.S. Lewis, included in Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C.S. Lewis
[6] Albert Borgman, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life 1987