Labor Day...

I was studying Genesis this past year and spoke on it during the summer and one of the things that caught my attention was the curse on Adam.

Genesis 3:17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

I thought, "Is that really the curse for Adam? Is that curse still relevant today? Is there an emergent curse? One that deals with us, white, middle income, males, who sit behind a desk, works with computers instead of farm implements, and who buys their groceries at Von's or the Piggly Wiggly? We have overrode the curse with technology and hired out the labor to laborers."

Then I started thinking of the Kingdom and who is blessed in the Garden. Those who work in the Garden. Not by profession but by heart and soul. It is easy to override the curse but that doesn't give us the blessing. Just because we don't sweat in the toil for our food doesn't mean that we find ourselves blessed in the living of our lives.

We have transferred the curse and the humiliation to those who toil in the fields and sweat for the food which we eat in our air conditioned homes. We treat them with contempt when they want a better standard of living for their families by asking for a fairer wage. Farmers are not the villains here, we are all.

We cannot use scripture to demand our family values are held by government but turn our backs on the people who labor for our food, when those same scriptures call us to love justice and mercy. We who follow Christ cannot be blind towards those who the curse is cast upon and expect that we can keep our family values intact. Are the laborers without family values? Are the laborers not worthy of the redemption to the garden and isn't the Garden where we find our values?

I think Labor Day is for us to remember the laborer and not just another day off from work...