The Christian at Work

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Thinking Christianly About Work

I don't want to destroy your eardrums, but it is awfully frustrating when you finish a talk and they come up and they say, yeah, it was good, but I didn't hear everything you said, you know, so let me know how the volume is as we go.

But my name is Ted Fenske, and I'm delighted to be here and encourage you in your Christian walk. And the title of this talk here, this breakout, is Thinking Christianly About Work. And work has taken on a bit of a bad rap in our time, in our culture.

And so what I want to do is think about as fellow Christians, as followers of Jesus, how should we think about our day to day work, and how does that then impact our day from Monday through Friday and our weekend as well, and our day of rest, our Sabbath.

And the scriptural quote that I love from 1 Corinthians 10 31, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. And this is kind of the base, a starting point of how we understand these things. Now, I've worked for, well, 35 years in medicine in Edmonton, and so I've had that large chunk of experience of work.

But, you know, getting there through my university training in the summers to make money to pay for my university and room and board and food and these kinds of things, I had a whole variety of jobs, you know, from childhood delivering papers through, after high school I worked as a garbage compactor, and I worked in the pulp and paper mill in Port Alberni.

I drove bus for a summer, you know, was a swimming instructor, and all that variety of different kinds of jobs. I look back on them now, I see that they're all very, very important. I draw from them, believe it or not.

Even in medicine, even in a sub-specialty of cardiology, I draw from these experiences and they enrich, and each of them represented their own mission field, which I also highly value. So the first question is, you know, how should we as Christians think about work?

Should we think about it like so many people in our culture thinks about work, the four-letter word of work, you know, the toil and the drudgery of it, the necessary evil of work. You know, I work just to pay the bills, you know, so that I can do real life, you know, so it's just going to be something that has to be endured and just grit my teeth and go to work kind of idea.

Or should we think about work as my all-in-all? This is how I define myself, this is my significance, my acceptance I find through my work, my security is all based in work and what I'm doing. Is it my identity?

Am I what I do? And often, of course, you know, if you fall into the trap of, you know, you're waiting in line or whatever at Timmy's and someone beside you, say, you strike up a conversation after the weather, and you say, oh, what do you do?

It's kind of like this, how we kind of think about ourselves oftentimes is what we're doing, our work equals our identity for some. Is that how we should think about it? Or should we think about it as something we balance?

So we hear quite a bit in Madison in particular these days, where it's all about lifestyle. You choose a subspecialty based on a lifestyle that you want, you know, so you want to spend some time in Hawaii or whatever you want to do, and so you choose your subspecialty that allow you to do that.

And it's all about work-life balance. We hear this terminology quite a bit. And really, when it's said work here, life here, that means really that work is non-life, you know, this is not life, you know, and so my life is over here, this is life, and then I got the work.

Is that how we should be thinking about our work? It's just something that is like a compartmentalized extra that we're just trying to, again, endure and balance and then blame for the stress in our life and the strain and the troubles in our life.

It's all because of work, work, you know, and so should that be our way of thinking about work? Or lastly, should we be thinking about work like this person's thinking about it? I'm working, I work hard, so I don't have to work.

It's all about not having to work. The whole purpose in life is leisure. Is this a trajectory for the Christian, for the follower of Jesus, that we get to this point of not having to do anything, just sitting on the beach with the gin and tonic, the sunshine, and this is living.

This is living the dream, as we see. And I was just in Arizona with my wife for a little break to break the back of winter, and we met a number of people who were living their retired lives this way. And having, looking back on their careers, it's just something that allowed them to be here in the good life now, sitting and doing nothing.

And really, it made me very, very sad for them. Now, we go back in time to the antiquity, and we look at the Greek, the Greek view of work. They had a very low view of work, and their entire society was run by slaves.

So slaves were living tools for them, and everything was revolving around what the slaves did, so they could be freed up to do, you know, as Plato said, for nobler pursuits, which sounds awfully good on paper, but actually turns out to be, you know, drunkenness and debauchery and promiscuity, and this is the nobler pursuits that they ended up doing oftentimes.

But they looked down on work, on labor, as something that's very menial, and something that actually was something they would not want to do. Of course, you know, come the Romans that followed the Greeks, and they had that same view, an elitist view.

Of course, they also, their culture relied upon slavery, and so they despised, and here is Cicero, Roman orator, very famous in his day, and he despised labor, and said it's unfit for a gentleman to do work.

And he said, no workshop can have anything noble in it. Work is for the peasant, work is for the slave, and leisure then is the goal. He would agree with the fourth point there of the guy sitting in the hammock in the sunshine.

That's what it's all about in the Roman elitist view. But then comes along Christianity, and with Christianity, of course, so many things change, but one of them was work, the understanding of work. Jesus, the carpenter, and for the majority of his life, too, we don't know the detail of that, but he was working.

He was working in what we might think of as just a menial labor job of, you know, building tables and chairs and things like this. And then comes Apostle Paul, the tent maker, and so we have immediately now, with the entrance of Christianity, we have work looking differently now.

This is not just something that slaves do. These are the very, you know, Jesus, the whole foundation of our understanding of what it is to be a Christian, and God incarnate is working, and said that my father is working, so I work as well.

And so work is taking on immediately a different perspective. And from the gospel, we understand that the greatest in God's kingdom is the servant of all. So that slave, that living tool over there, that is our trajectory, you know, to be a servant of all in God's kingdom.

And so with that then, in Paul's writing, there was expressed a perspective then in terms of the bondservant and what their role was. The bondservant really was, you know, Roman property. They're just like chattel, you know.

But still, even though you're a bondservant, even though you're just like furniture, this is what Paul says, I want you to obey your masters and obey them as if you're serving wholeheartedly, as if you're serving the Lord.

And so we have work equals obedience, a spiritual act, service to Jesus Christ himself. Work, you know, bringing the meal in, or cleaning this or that, menial labor equals serving Christ. Absolutely radical perspective of work.

And it wasn't just for the bondservant. It was for the master as well. Masters, treat your slaves in the same way, since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven. So there's an equalization having here now, just because your master does not mean you have any more value than that person who's cleaning your toilet.

The bondservant and the master are an equal value in the eyes of God for the first time. This is a very radical notion of the human being and what it means to be human. And work was central to that understanding.

So our treatment of our slave, of our bondservant, was then also a spiritual act of respect for Christ himself. And of course, this just doesn't come out of a vacuum. This comes from a whole perspective on life.

And I would say that there's a worldview at play here. I want to spend just a little bit of time talking about worldview. And when I'm talking about the idea of worldview, this is how we see a common sense understanding of how we see the world around us, understand things, understand what reality is, how we know things.

Is it Google or is it something else? And how we are to live our lives. And so these are the basic kind of pillars or core beliefs that we hold deeply in our heart, and maybe haven't even articulated them, even made them clear, but still we act on them.

So our worldview is less of something that we look at, it's something like these glasses that we look through. Our worldview is how we see the world around us. And are we seeing it as it truly is, reality?

Or are we seeing it blurred or blinded? Depends on what worldview, what glasses you've got on. If I put on your glasses instead of these ones, whoa, you know, I'm in trouble. I need a white cane and a dog, you know, to get around.

And so which worldview is very important, of course. And Francis Schaeffer was famous for saying many things, but one, he said, people often get their worldview like those who catch a cold, you know, from the culture around them.

And he said, we have to do, you know, better than that because the worldview has implications. How you see the world then affects our values, what we see as important or not important. And then from that, our behaviors.

So our behaviors come from values, our values come from our worldview core beliefs. And for us as Christians, as followers of Jesus, we have a biblical worldview, or we should strive to have a biblical worldview.

And how I think of the biblical worldview is in this diagram here, which you might recall, or you might be familiar to from grade 11 English class, where you had the short story trajectory line, you know, the plot line of the short story.

We have the beginning, the rising tension, the climax, and then the denouement, the coming to conclusion. And so I fashioned it around that, the four main pillars, if you will, of the biblical worldview of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration around that story plot line, because this is the grand story.

This is the grand narrative that we're part of and that we're living out. This is the redemptive history that God has placed for us that we have access to as we read our Bibles. And so when we look at the biblical worldview, understand that God created from nothing, is separate from his creation, and who we are as his created image bearers, we understand the fall, the problem with the world.

It's not because of those people over there, or because of her, or because of him, but rather it's because of me and the fall of every human being that is responsible for the tragedy, the human condition that we find ourselves in.

And we're not left there. We have been redeemed. Jesus has died on the cross. His blood has been shed, his body broken, so that we can be in a right relationship with God and with each other. I'm sorry, has it been off for a while?

Is it plugged in okay? It might have been like on a standby thing, or do you want to go back? Can you see that? Maybe we'll turn the lights off then. Can we turn the lights off so you see if that works?

The front lights maybe in particular. You can leave the backlit ones on, but if you can turn these ones off that'd be great, because that just bleeds it out a little bit. Did you see this picture? Okay, so our worldview then affects our values and those our behavior.

Put your hand up if it goes down again. I don't want to just talk to myself here, you know. But the, so this, did you see this? You got one? Okay, so then just to go through these four pillars, if you like, of the Christian, of the biblical worldview, we have creation.

And when we crack open the first pages of Genesis, and we see that there's work going on. God's at work. So we've got the six-day work week, and not just that, but the rest, the Sabbath rest as well.

And so this rhythm now, this temporal rhythm of worked day six and rest day one, you know, is embedded right into the created order, right into the design of what it means to be human, to be male and female in God's image.

We have work as our temporal touch point then, this rhythm that's right in. It's reminded, the Israelites are reminded in the Decalogue about the Sabbath keeping, and the reason and the explanation for that is because of the creation.

And so we, right off the bat, we see that there's work, and there's rest, and this is design, designed into the created order. And we've been created too, and we have this, what we call, or it was referred to as the creational ordinance, where God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him.

You know, repeating it there just so you don't lose it. It's really, really important. It's critical that we're image bearers, male and female, he created them. So to be an image bearer means to be a male or a female, and in the created order.

And he, God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed in his nostrils the breath of life. And so we have a physical aspect to us, we have a spiritual aspect to us, and they are there together, combined, not like right and left, my right's my physical, my left is my spiritual, or north and south, but rather combined like dye and water, all together, a living soul.

And this is the human being in biblical scriptural understanding. And so if we go on further here in Genesis, we see the first commission, this first commissioning of Adam and Eve, of humankind. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion.

Genesis 1, 26 to 28. So here's, we have the first job description, if you like. Right off the bat, this is what I want you to do. And it's very clear that there's a number of components here. There's the being fruitful and multiplying part, you know, to continue on with the filling and the forming that God has begun in creation.

The word, his image bearers, his ambassadors here, his vice regents, if you will, in order to continue that on, that work on, and part of that work is to build a social world, starting with the family as the core, the core foundation, and then have churches, and to have schools, and to have communities, and have government, and have laws, and have culture that stems out of this social building of filling and forming.

And also to subdue and have dominion. And when the, when it says subdue, it's, there's different ways of subduing, you know. So if there was a snake here, I would subdue the snake differently than I'm going to subdue my garden.

In my garden, the subduing is to care for it, to nurture it, to, you know, rake and help develop its raw potential so they can have tomatoes, or carrots, or what have you. And so, versus the snake, there's gonna be a dead snake here.

That's how I'm going to subdue that one. And so the subduing here in the cultural mandate is the former of taking something and making, taking the raw materials, and turning it into order, and into beauty.

And so we have this cultural mandate, if you will, that we all are to cultivate. That's where we get from the word cultivate, we get the word culture, you know, what we are to make of God's creation, and the word cultus, where we get cult, how we are to worship.

And so our worship and our doing are related to this cultural mandate. Then we think of the fall. And it's very important to note the timing of this, because we've got the cultural mandate first, and then comes the fall.

People often think, oh yeah, work, that's part of the fall, you know. That's why it's four letters, you know, I hate work. No, work came first. Work was before the fall came. The fall came, though, and made our work very frustrated.

Cursed is the ground because of you. It will produce thorns and thistles. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food. And so we understand then that work now is difficult, it's frustrated, and frustrating because of the entrance of sin.

But it's not the work, per se, it's the fall that's done that. Like everything, all of our relationships have been marred now because of the fall. And the cultural mandate that was given before the fall has not been revoked.

So, you know, the time of Noah, at the time of the covenant given to Noah with the rainbow, it was repeated there. It was reiterated about being fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and the like.

And so this is still an ongoing command that we have. And then because of the redemption, because of Jesus' work on the cross, work then is redeemed. Because we're in right relationship with God, those who believe in Christ, believe in his name, and place our trust in him and follow him with our lives, we have right relationship with God.

We have opportunity to have right relationship with others. And because of this right relationship that we're in now, we have the opportunity to redeem our work as well, even though it's still frustrating and because we're in this fallen world.

Because Jesus fulfills and redeems the original calling given to Adam. And so we have the Great Commission. And the Great Commission has been given in Matthew 28. And really the Great Commission then is this cultural mandate for a fallen world.

That's what the cultural mandate looks like in the fall. It looks like go, make disciples, teaching them to obey. It looks to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Great Commission is the cultural mandate here for us now. And so it's really where culture making and disciple making come together here for us today. So we are to evangelize, yes, and we are to look for opportunities for cultural renewal.

Yes. So it's both. It's not just work in the church. It's work in culture as well. Both and. Then we have the restoration. And with restoration we have a trajectory of where we're going with this. This is not about sitting on my backside in the sunshine having a gin and tonic.

Not at all. It's about actually embracing the ministry of reconciliation we've been brought into to co-labor with the Holy Spirit as His ambassadors. And so as we reconcile all things under the Lordship of Christ, everything comes under His Lordship.

And we ask our prayer then in terms of our work is, Lord, establish the work of our hands. You establish the work of our hands in Psalm 90. And so the early church did this. They understood this to a certain extent, and they were living it out.

And this is a document called the Didache. Very cool document. Extra biblical. But it's, you know, estimated around year 80, 110. So it's very early on. And really it's, you can think of it like a discipleship manual.

You know, how to Christianity in the early church. We see one of the quotes there is, if one wishes to settle among you, let him work and eat. No one should live among you in idleness. And really echoing the words of Apostle Paul when he said in 2 Thessalonians, if a man will not work, he'll not eat.

In other words, work is really important. And no one's just gonna be sitting around and loafing around. It's important for us to be working. And there was then right off the get-go a high view of work.

And this was just reiterated in the early church years. And great church saints, for example, Justin the Martyr, who in the second century, who really linked work with loving our neighbor. So we are to, you know, in the great, Jesus' great combination there of loving God and loving others.

This is the way we can do that. This is the way we can live that out in our workplace. And Deuterium in the third century linked work with obedience to Christ. And so our work, what we're doing, whatever our work might be, this is how we are following Jesus.

And so it's a very high view of work that was actually continued on into the monastic era. So the monks had a very high view of work as well. And they referred to the Hebrew word avodah. Avodah can be translated both as work and worship, interestingly.

The same word, depending on the context. And so the Saint Benedict established this in Latin, ora e labora, to pray and to work, and to combine the two. And this is the way we can redeem our work as we do it prayerfully.

And so they did. And they had this prayerful work that they did as monks. And they had a very dignified view of manual labor. Every activity, raking the leaves or cleaning the kitchen, it was all for the glory of God.

And they felt that it discipled, it disciplines the body. This is good for us physically to do it. It trains humility. You know, I'll clean the toilet. It's good for me to clean the toilet. It reminds me of who I am.

You know, I'm not some king somewhere. I'm a fellow disciple of Christ. And of course I can clean the toilet. And it serves the community. And it prevents idleness because idleness was thought to be the enemy of the soul.

And surely in our day and age, you know, with people on their phones just swiping away, I would say it's a definite enemy of the soul, especially if our eyes are gazing on those images. But then with monastic movement then, there was something that happened about the division of work.

There was the holy work that we're doing here in the monastery, and there's the less holy work, the ordinary work that they're doing out there. So they began to have this divide, if you will, between the sacred and the secular.

And this became more formalized in a period called scholasticism. Now we're going forward into the medieval time, the 1200s, Thomas Aquinas' great mind. And he was tasked with the impossible requirement to try to bridge Greek, pagan, dualistic philosophy and Christianity.

Go. And so, you know, he's trying to work that out. And he came to this brilliant but terrible way of doing it. And how he thought of it then was what became known as the nature-grace divide. Because he had an upper and a lower story of understanding that there was the sacred in the upper story, and there was the nature in the lower story.

And we have the secular. He's had this divide then, this way of dealing with, very much parallel to Greek dualism, and a way of kind of bringing Christianity and forcing that round Christianity into the square peg of paganism in a way.

And so with this then, there was the sacred priesthood, and there was the secular work, labor. And then there was value attributed to that. One has more value than the other. And really, you know, we've seen this then get played out even in present time in the church.

And so there is this. People will say, well, I'm a full-time pastor. I'm doing the Lord's work. You know, what are you doing? You're a plumber or whatever. Okay, that's good for you. You can do your plumbing, make your money, and go to the church.

Because this is the Lord's work, you know? So this is this idea, this two-tier, if you like, distinction between secular work and our sacred work, rather, and secular. And we see this then even in the secular community, how it's embraced that idea.

And so we have prestigious work, you know? I'm a doctor, you know? So that's prestigious. That's important. That's valuable. And then we have menial work. The guy's cleaning the street, you know? And so there's this value.

So the doctor is important, valuable. The person cleaning the street, unimportant, unvaluable, because of what they're doing. And so they have this divide. Of course, this is not how we think Christianly about work.

But this is popular, and it's even seeped into the church, and the way church thinks about work. And that's why the Reformation was needed, and the Reformation is needed again and again. Every day we have to reform ourselves around Scripture, and what the Bible's saying, and the Holy Spirit speaking to us through it.

And so in the Reformation then, we had now Martin Luther, and really focused on the idea of the priesthood of all believers. So thank you, priests. But really all of us here have a priestly role, and this royal priesthood, and all lawful vocations, you know, not prostitution or what have you, all lawful vocations are equally pleasing to God.

And abolished then, or tried to abolish this two-tier distinction of work. And then went on to say there are not two distinct classes of work. No. One for more spiritually focused, and another for worldly pursuits.

No, there is not. He was very adamant about that. And one quote I love of Luther's was, the maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays. And not because she's, she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps, but because God loves clean floors.

And there's something about excellence, and God loves excellence. And we do whatever our job is well, and this is pleasing to God. And Calvin who followed Luther said the same things, and actually used the word vocare, or vocation, or calling, and said the Lord's calling is the beginning and foundation of well-doing.

No task will be so sordid or base, provided you obey your calling in it, that will not shine out and be reckoned very precious in God's sight. So our work then is seen as a calling. And the Puritans took this.

They took these reformational, very important ideas, and they gave them real feet, if you like, and real purchase in culture. And William Perkins, one of the Puritans, Puritan theologians, is known for saying the main end of our lives is to serve God in serving of men in works of our calling.

So we serve God through our daily work. Serve God by serving our neighbor through ordinary work, cleaning the street, whatever that work would be. And whatever you do then, as Paul would say, work heartily as to the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive an inheritance as your reward.

You are serving the Lord Christ. So here we have this very strong, high view of work and how we should frame it in terms of working for the Lord. And from this view, from these very important ideas, developed the Protestant work ethic, which has taken a bad rap too, you know, and people actually see it as a negative thing.

But actually in its inception, it was a beautiful thing because it saw work then as stewardship. You know, work, we're taking care of this world that we've been entrusted to, and we're to try to cultivate it and to help it grow and nurture it because it's been, it's a gift.

So the central aspect of stewardship is understanding that the world around us and my job is a gift. And then there's faithful work that I do where even though no one's watching me, I'll still do it the right job, the right way.

Even though it's harder, I'm going to do it excellent. And I don't have to get an accolade for it so that there's honesty to the job and there's service to the job. I do the job because it helps human flourishing.

So there's these beautiful elements then of stewardship and honesty and service are the pillars then of the Protestant work ethic. And communities flourished as a result of this. This actually does allow for flourishing.

But unfortunately, like so many things, like health care, like education, they become secularized. These are Christian pursuits that had Christian beginnings and even science that got secularized. And when they get secularized then the intention and the foundation is eroded.

And how can you have, for example, a calling if there's no caller? You need your caller, you know. And so you don't have no caller, then calling then becomes very much more not about trying to serve a transcendent, but rather just serving myself.

And so whatever you do, glorify yourself. We have greed that comes in and deceit and ambition. And we've been warned against selfish ambition in the Bible. And so this is then this distortion then of this Protestant work ethic into a secular view.

And we see this played out historically in a couple of experiments I'll just briefly mention. One, Napoleon's secular state that he tried to, he envisioned and got going after the French Revolution. And here we're going to get the church out of the way.

And so no more seven-day and no more Sabbath, guys. No, no. We have 10-day weeks, 10 days, the Dakar Day, 10 days here now. And on the 10th day we'll rest. And he implemented that. And here's a pocket watch of that time.

And it shows the 10-day week and the three 10-day in a month then. And it worked out on paper. It's gorgeous. You know, the week is 10 days. The month is 30 days. You know, there's no skipping a February leap year.

No, just 10, 10, 10. It's beautiful. But it didn't play out. It didn't allow for flourishing. It was actually rejected by the population. They couldn't live it. And there was no social cohesion. It just fell apart.

And why did it fall apart? Because if we go back to creation, we see embedded in the created order, we see this six-day-of-work, day-of-rest, six-day-of-work, day-of-rest rhythm that's right into the design of what it means to be human.

And here the 10 days is just not working. And so it was abandoned. He had to abandon it. 1805, okay, go back to the seven-day. Stalin in the Cold War, the beginning, 1929, established the five-day continuous work week.

This is brilliant if you want to get it done. And he had a very high expectations of what the goals they needed to achieve to compete with the West. And so his idea was going to have five days. We're going to have a rotating, rotating day off.

And so that any given day, doesn't matter what day it is, one through five, 80 of the workforce is going to be working. 80%, the other 20 is having their break. And that means the machines are going 24 -7.

We're going to catch the West and surpass them. So he thought. And so he established this five-day continual work day and it fell apart. There was no shared Sabbath. There was no shared rest day. Even if you don't believe in God, people weren't able to join as a family.

Have a meal. And they weren't able to, there was so, social cohesion fell apart. And he couldn't, even though he had the iron fist, you know, behind the iron curtain and he could say whatever, and people were being shot like crazy, he could say anything.

It just wasn't workable. He couldn't make it work. And he also had to modify it later in the 30s and then abandon it in 1940. So you go to Russia today, they've got seven days just like we do. That's because it just doesn't work.

But nonetheless, the ideas of that have persisted. This utilitarian perspective of work. I work because of the here and now benefits, period. It's all about the here and now. There's no transcendent value.

There's no purpose. There's no purpose to my work. There's no ultimate purpose to my rest. And so toil then just becomes magnified as we get into drudgery and production. Interestingly in the USSR and Russia today is diminished when we do that kind of thing.

And rest then becomes purposeless, just along the beach. Just nothing going on here. Nothing, you know, just an emptiness. And so as Christians then, we're saying, no, that's not true. That's not reality.

And we have to then redeem work, just like the Reformation again. And understand that, well, no work is a gift from God. Whatever your work is, that's a gift from God. That's it as a service to Him. Let's glorify God and bring joy to others in our work.

We are God's workmanship, Paul says in Ephesians 2, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. And so we're here not by accident. It's not an evolutionary thing.

Darwin was wrong. We're here on purpose, for a purpose, and our work is part of that purpose. Bonhoeffer said in his book Living Together, a little fantastic book, that continual prayer promotes work, and it affirms work, and gives work great significance and joyfulness.

Then he went on to say, without the labor of the day, prayer is not prayer. And without prayer, work is not work. So he did the ora e labora again, brought the work and the prayer together again, and made that his way of redeeming work.

Whatever his work was, was redeemed, because he's praying to the Lord as he did it. And of course, when we do that, we don't have this divide anymore, this compartmentalized life of, well, this is my work life, and now I'm at church, this is my church, I'm a Christian on Sunday.

No, it all kind of blends now, not into drudgery, but into joy, into beauty, and into service to the Lord. And so there's a redemption of time, if you will. So we have our sacred time, you know, our time of our devos and everything like that.

We move it just, it's there still. Yes, of course, have your devo, have your family worship, have your time of gathering as a corporate body to pray, and to sing, and to have the ordinances. Yes, but we take that mindset into our week as well.