Issabon in 2011

Eve was given to pain. Adam was given to toil. Both were severed from a unity with God no one has ever had the opportunity to experience on this earth since. Both man and woman were handed over to the same struggle in different areas of their lives.

Eve, though created to assist Adam in keeping the garden, was given over to intense struggle in child birth - her main focus, purpose.

Adam, though created to keep and watch over the garden was also designed to assist his wife in raising their children. Now, however he is given over to struggling against a newly cursed earth in order to survive (opposite of Gods initial plan - Gen. 1:9-13, 2:6, 8-14).

Eve's pain, issabon, is the same as Adam's toil. Both define the new struggle. Hard work. Grieving. Affliction.

This new year is not the year of leisure nor is it another opportunity to climb the corporate ladder. It's simply another season we're blessed with to fulfill the purpose we were made to fulfill...walk with and glorify the Lord.

Paul takes us from the garden to the Christian community. To the Thessalonians Paul defines his strategy regarding work in this new community:

'We worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you,' (2 Thess. 3:8)

Paul uses three different words in Greek to describe his struggle:

worked - to labor, like an employee, perform

labored - weariness caused by work, fatigued from the labor

toiling - daily travails, routine of long hard - never ending work, common labor

'We worked hard day and night, wearied from the heavy burden of the daily grind and yet were not idle with our hands or minds and never a burden to your household or finances,' (2 Thess. 3:8 Rich version).

Adam and Eve worked before the curse, they may have even sweat from that work (I assume sweat glands existed) - it was the new struggle to survive physically, mentally and especially spiritually that altered their habits but not their basic purpose...that is, to glorify God in everything they did.

Paul takes their struggle, the common struggle of mankind and redefines it. He doesn't eliminate the struggle like the Greek philosophers attempted to do. He doesn't separate the 'holy' work of saints (bible study, prayer, preaching) from the secular/dirty work of the comman man (tradeswork, farming, shepherding). Paul simply does what must be done to glorify God, in all forms of labor, in all seasons, in all cities, with all peoples, all in the name of glorifying YHVH.

That is more than a New Years resolution...that is the resolution of a New Life.