Today is September 1. Here in America, for all practical purposes, the first day of September heralds the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. Our national Labor Day celebration is coming soon (always the first Monday in September) to commemorate the end of a long, hot summer of hard work. I think of it as a secularized version of the biblical, agrarian celebration nearer the end of September known by the Jews as Sukkot.
During ancient times, gathering in the harvest wasn’t the end of labor, however! The next step was preparing and preserving the harvest. Reflecting on the need to grind the grains to make flour triggered a memory of the BBC mini-series called Secrets of the Castle, which features a historian and two archeologists trying to rebuild a castle and live the way workers and peasants would have done these tasks in thirteenth-century Europe.
What historian Ruth Goodman found was that the “daily grind” (historically) referred to the one and one-half hours of hard work that it took women each day to grind enough grain on a milestone to make bread for their families. Grinding wheat was strenuous work but absolutely essential for the health and wellbeing of their loved ones, because bread was “the staff of life.”
Today, very few people grind their own wheat to bake bread on the physical plane. Most of us buy bread at the store—or at least buy the flour to make our bread. Still, we are each involved in our own “daily grind” of work. Whether we’re children learning to walk or read, adults laboring in the active workforce, or retired pensioners pursuing avocations, we’re all grinding away at something, and that’s good! Work is good for us. God designed us to find satisfaction in being productive. Work keeps us sharp mentally and physically and motivates us to get moving in the morning!
But in all our busyness, I hope we remember that there is also a good and necessary grind on the spiritual plane. No matter our age, we have loved ones—sibs, children, grandchildren, church mates, neighbors, colleagues—who are dependent on us to some extent to provide spiritual daily bread for them! The majority of my “free” time is spent writing posts for my blog, where I’m trying to grind out devotionals to encourage believers and draw people to Jesus. Most of the time, writing is a joy, but it’s also a labor of love, and sometimes I feel like it takes forever to get things right. I really have to meditate, pray, research, study, and seek wisdom to digest my material and turn it into spiritual bread. I grind away very slowly, with painstaking effort. However, I’m slowly learning to appreciate this “daily grind“ as a wonderful privilege, even when it’s hard! It’s a way of trying to love and serve my heavenly Father and my neighbors. It’s an act of worship! The daily grind is essential spiritual work for each of us, worth every tedious minute of effort!
Are you working hard this September? I hope you find joy and satisfaction in what you’re doing. If not, try turning over your whole heart, life, and work to Jesus. He’ll give you good hope and good work!
“Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:1 . . . to grind out and to eat!).
Summer Setting 