Recently, I accidentally whiped my website server clean, and being as I am not actually a web developer or a knowladgable server manager of any sort, I had no back up saved. I lost my website. It was completely and forever gone. When I realized what had happened, my heart sank as I had poured hours into learning enouhg basic coding to get things off and going. I had spent hours writing articles which now only exist as a loose construct in my mind. All of my work was gone and I felt horrible about it.

Time passed though, and as these kinds of things often go, I got over it. I am now looking at this as a great way to start fresh. I have made many mistakes and know how to prevent some of them going forward. I will now be periodically saving backups of my web server. Most importantly though, this is a great opportunity to practice something that has been on my mind lately.

I am not quite sure where I heard it, but I recently listened to a pastor talking about how important work is for humans. He made the point that we often times fall into the misunderstanding that we are only having to work because of the fall, but this is not true. When God created Adam in the garden, he gave Adam work to do. Our purpose is to work. Yes, work is harder because of the fall, but nevertheless, work is our purpose.

This flies in the face of what our culture usually teaches us. We are to make a lot of money so we can quit working. We are to save for retirement so we can quit working. We are pushed toward the idea of work being a necessary evil and maybe one day we can exist in a constant state of leisure. A problem exists in our minds when we view work this way. It because dull and unenjoyable. We find ourselves disliking work and definitely do not want to work on things when we get home from our jobs.

This idea is easy to see when we look around. My grandparent's generation is a hard working group of people. They worked their jobs, came home and did extraordinary things around the house. From beautiful gardens, to building decks, to improving their homes, etc. they were always working. This is not the case with my parents generation and is certainly not the case with my generation.

We are living in a most lazy culture. We live in a culture that does not work hard when they are at work then go home and watch tv. People don't push themselves to learn in their adult years. People don't improve their homes through their own hard work. This state of laziness is not how God intended us to operate.

This lazy style of living produces minds that are unfulfilled. I believe lazy living is part of the reason depression and anxiety are so prevelant today. We deep down know we are not living meaningful lives, so we are unsatisfied as we should be. The answer though is not to take some pill to make the bad feelings go away. The answer is to go do something meaningful. Live with purpose. Do the work God is putting on your heart to do. As the Proverb says, "Consider the ant."

Since I have began looking at life through this lense, I feel more purpose driven. I have been accomplishing more at my job. I have been doing more work around the house. I have been doing a better job of taking care of things that need to be done. I have started planning to start becoming more self sustaining by raising my own food. Now I get to start fresh with my website and plan to get back into writing more frequently as well.

Because of these things, I have generally felt a sense of fulfillment that had been missing.

I look forward to see where this newfound approach to life takes me.