Work Is Prayer, or, The Theology of Drywall

Friday evening in dry Minnesota springtime.  I am drywalling Tilly's future bedroom closet, imagining the wonderful moments she'll breathe in in her sun porch, when I get a call from Emma, requesting that I bring over to her friend's house--where she's had a glass of wine or two--two nursing pads, in case there's some untoward leakage when she and the ladies go out downtown tonight.  

As I drove over, fuming mildly at the interruption to my work (said friend's house is 3 blocks away), something hit me.  

I had a flashback to my Grandpa Bernard telling me that his parents always told him that "Work is prayer."  

Emma has felt my mildly-fuming wrath more than once when she's interrupted my work with other similar requests.  In her family, I believe, meal time or together time trumped all.  

In my family, you didn't go in to the house for lunch or dinner until the work was done, or some phase of it had come to an end.   Work--both its results and the process itself--trumped everything.  

So--it just hit me--work approaches something sacred to me...not only a means to an end, but an end in itself, and if you extend my grandpa's saying a bit, a contributing factor in salvation, or at least a responsibility to God.  

The Theology of Drywall, therefore, is a belief that when I am working, I am doing something that, when properly channeled, actually pleases God.  And depending on the activity (and the music on in the background, which right now is U2 Achtung Baby), I do at times get deeply lost in the work itself, and in the idea that it's pleasing God that I am using my time here given to me for something productive.

Not saying this is my new religion, or that I am going to go build a compound in the jungle honoring Saint Drywall Screw Gun--just some random thoughts on a Friday evening when Annie our Goldendoodle and I have the house to ourselves. 

It's hard being the oldest child, Tilly.  Here in this post is proof.