Yesterday, America celebrated Labor Day.  It's a good day.  It's a day to take time to think about and honor those who work, those who, day after day after day, engage in some type of vocational occupation.
     Most of us accept work as an inevitable fact of existence.  In many respects, it is.  Most of us must work. Not all of us of course necessarily like what we do.  And not all of us enjoy getting up for work each day. Nonetheless, to work is to be human, and to be human is to work.  Working enables us to discover our humanness most fully.  It challenges us, involves us, enables us, fills us.  Working gives us a more complete grasp of who we are in our world.
     More broadly speaking, work has a point.  When we work, however enthusiastically, imperfectly, or apathetically we do so, we echo the fact of a personal creator.  We are people who, when we work, whether we know it or not, are contributing and communicating.  We are contributing to the greater good of the planet, we are communicating the presence of a good God.  Consciously or not, we are underscoring that life has a meaning greater than living day to day.  We are stating that although, yes, we must in most instances work to survive, we nevertheless see hope and meaning beyond it.
      Absent an intentional beginning, the cosmos has no reason to be.  And we have no reason to work.  But we do.  So it is that we testify daily to the necessity of an intelligent and personal creator.