Joy Amidst Our Toil
8/21/25 Chris Jones-YBL Small Groups Director
A few weeks ago, my bride took me to our first concert at Birmingham’s new amphitheater. The legendary Chicago band Cheap Trick was opening the show, and I have wanted to see them for years. Sadly, they were awful, and I was not remotely excited about seeing the headliner, eighty-year-old Rod Stewart.
Valerie convinced me to stay, and I am so glad she did. I had forgotten that Sir Rod had been part of the glorious MTV Unplugged trend of my 90s youth. He started playing songs off of his unplugged album and I knew every single one. I was not just singing along I was transported back in time. I was sitting in the back of my mom’s royal blue 1993 Plymouth Voyager van heading from Birmingham to Orange Beach while Rod crooned “Have I told you lately that I love you?” through the radio. It was glorious… till it wasn’t.
Because as good as it was to feel like I was back in that time I also had to feel the things I had lost from that time. People who are not around anymore like my parents. Bad decisions that had not yet been made but would be.
It was a very strange experience this exhilarating joy and pain mixed together.
The next morning in my bible reading I came across Ecclesiastes 2:24: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God”….
There it was. Life (and work) can feel like toil. That’s part of the curse in Genesis 3. We work by the sweat of our brow to glorify God and make the most of the life He has given us and sometimes it feels like the earth itself is resisting us. As my ninth grade English teacher said, “Your friends turn their back on you, and your family dies”.
Often, I find myself retreating into cynicism or survivor mode in my life, afraid to enjoy the good things God does give for fear that He will eventually take them away.
That’s why you and I need that verse from Ecclesiastes. To remind us that life is more than slogging through till we die and go to heaven. No, God gives us JOY amidst our toil. And He means for us to ENJOY it! I have no regrets about dancing like giant idiot at that concert because I was responding to the joy the Lord gave me.
For me that joy took the form of an octogenarian rock star in a cheetah-print sport coat. I don’t know what that will look like for you, but I pray God makes you fully enter in to the joy He gives amidst your toil.