They tell me the only man-made thing in heaven will be the scars on Jesus's hands. Poetic, I suppose, but I'm not sure it's accurate. I'm not saying it's not. I'm just thinking about it.
We have come to believe that "work" is bad and "leisure" is good. Christians even believe that work is part of the curse from sin. Now, it doesn't take a lot of effort to see this isn't biblically true. For instance, In Genesis God made Man and then set him in the Garden and put him to work (Gen 2:15). No sin. No error. God assigned work to Adam immediately. One of his first jobs was to name all the animals (Gen 2:19-20). Work, work, work! Clearly this was not a curse. It was a gift from a loving God. So why do we think of work as a curse? Well, in chapter 3 of Genesis, work is mentioned as part of the curse (Gen 3:17-19). Note, however, that it wasn't mere work; it was hard work. God told Adam, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" because prior to this event work wasn't hard. In essence, Adam was sentenced to hard labor because of sin. Labor itself was never the curse.
It turns out that work is not, by definition, a curse for sin. It turns out that we are actually designed for work. The redeemed human is "created in Christ Jesus for good works" (Eph 2:10). We are commanded to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Php 2:12). Spiritually and physically work is good for us. Oh, sure, so is rest (e.g., Exo 23:12). Even God rested (Gen 2:2). I'm not suggesting that work is good and leisure is bad. I'm suggesting that the Bible says that work is good, even if hard labor is hard, and we find fulfillment in it. If it is true that we were made to work, then, why wouldn't there be man-made things in heaven? And why shouldn't we find joy in work here and now?
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