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Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for God gives sleep to those who are beloved. – Psalm 127:1-2 (NRSV, adapted)

On a rainy Monday this fall, I spent a solid hour chasing two chickens around the backyard.

It’s been an animal-full autumn for my backyard, come to think of it. Two different bucks have taken repeated naps there—one dozing beside the fence under the mounted herb garden, the other stretching out in the grass behind the Adirondack chairs. The neighborhood’s stray cats have discovered the ground-level fountain that I keep beside the roses and use it as their watering bowl. Plus there are the usual birds and squirrels and chipmunks.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised to see chickens.

They were my neighbor’s chickens, loose from their elaborate “country chic” coop with its enclosed run. I didn’t know how they escaped their house or found their way over the fence.

I also didn’t know what to do about it. If chickens can break out of their house, is it my responsibility to deal with the consequences of a coop built in vain? Am I the default guard over a pair of chickens when the neighbor isn’t keeping watch?

Psalm 127 seems to have flown the coop of Ecclesiastes, with its philosophical lament over the useless anxiety of toil and the waste of building up that which will inevitably pass away. Vanity of vanities! “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain?” (Ecc. 2:22) I’m pretty sure my neighbor was just trying to get eggs.

The results of our labor are fleeting and imperfect under God’s sun. Sustaining ourselves on anxious energy doesn’t improve the final product, doesn’t sway the odds that our work might not yield the hoped-for fruit, doesn’t guarantee that the chickens will never escape. Vanity of vanities, indeed, to define ourselves by something so finite as work. Thank heavens, God does not name us by our labor or value us by our productivity!

So get some rest, friends, which is God’s gift and grace.

Prayer: Holy Love, you have made us to be more than our labors: more than what we build, more than what we guard, more than what we chase. Bless rest to our spirits and food to our bodies, we pray, and let love guard us against fear. 

 cross-posted with the Daily Devotional