The test of our work
Eugene Peterson:
The test of our work is not the profit we gain from it or the status we receive from it but its effects in creation. Are persons impoverished? Is the land diminished? Is society defrauded? Is the world less or more because of my work?
(Where Your Treasure Is, 139)
A Higher Calling
N.T. Wright:
Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world. It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning. That, quite simply is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us.
(Simply Christian, 237)