Work well done

I've chuckled at a saying that goes something like, ''Why is it that there's never enough time to do a job right, but always enough time to do it over?'' As we rush around in our busy circles of today's society, there may be times when we do jobs superficially. Just necessity? Do pressures of daily living prevent our doing the job right the first time? That's not worthy of our reason for existing!

It is only if we take life as we superficially see it, as a matter-based, sunrise-to-sunset-and-ending-in-death existence, that we make the mistake of letting world pressures, indifference, or even laziness govern our actions. And when we really think deeply, we know that it's not logical to look at things in this superficial way.

The Preacher wrote, ''Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.'' n1 Certainly that's not the way God, the infinitely intelligent and loving creator, has actually designed things.

n1 Ecclesiastes 1:2.

Throughout history men and women have espoused a higher, deeper purpose and motivation in their lives. Different religions have perhaps said it different ways, but the gist is that we should live to glorify God. And this is so relevant to doing a good job with day-to-day assignments and tasks. Our purpose is not just to get by, not just to get things over with so we can move on to the ''fun'' things of living. It's to glorify our creator, express His nature, in our daily lives. And this is natural!

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, saw in the Scriptures inspired descriptions of God's nature, specific terms for Deity. These can define and enrich our understanding of Him - and therefore of our own true selfhood and purpose as His offspring.

One of the terms is Spirit. ''God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,'' n2 Jesus told a Samaritan woman. Doesn't the fact that God is Spirit demand that we look abovem a strictly human, matter-based sense of life for our purpose? ''God is love,'' n3 the Bible also tells us. Don't we find joy in expressing and glorifying divine Love in all our daily efforts? Mind is a term for God implied throughout the Bible. Aren't we happiest when our actions exemplify intelligence and efficiency, when they express wisdom?

n2 John 4:24.

n3 I John 4:16.

We can also gather from the Scriptures that God is Principle, the one true lawmaker. And so it's natural and beneficial for us to express integrity, order, justice, conformity to divine law. God is also Soul. He is unopposable Truth and eternal Life. An understanding of His nature inspires holy motivations and actions.

Lower motives cannot yield any lasting happiness; an unworthy motive will sooner or later show up as dross, not gold.

Well, there's not enough timem to espouse all this careful doing, you may feel. And certainly many people will cry ''amen'' to that idea! But we find a very helpful, qpiritually inspired concept of time in Mrs. Eddy's definition of ''day'' in the Christian Science textbook. Part of the definition reads: ''. . . Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded. This unfolding is God's day, and 'there shall be no night there.' '' n4 Through purity of thought and life we approach that ''no night'' sense of being, of the eternality of good , and we're able to more freely do each task at hand with the conscious motivation of glorifying God, uninhibited by time limits. We more naturally express intelligence, grace, vitality, efficiency, poise, dominion.

n4 Science and health with Key to the Scripturesm,p. 584.

Will this, then, make us sad, serious, overdiligent drudges? No way! What can be more fulfilling than using God-given talents, working up to capacity, doing a job well, demonstrating a caring, cherishing love of our brother man by our expressing God's love for His perfect creation! What can be better than to see a job as worthwhile, see how it needs to be done, and let Mind direct us.

A hymn expresses this thought well: In perfect peace, with tumult stilled, Enhavened where no storms arise, There man can work what God hath willed; The joy of perfect work his prize.n5

n5 Christian Science Hymnal,m No. 93.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? Revelation 15:4