When Work Seems Wasted

Have you every worked really hard on something, only for it to seem wasted?

According to stats on my writing app, I wrote 166,00 words last year but only added 152,000 words to my documents. At first that puzzled me, until I realized something: Those 14,000 missing words were words I'd written then at some point deleted in my writing and editing. That was a painful realization.

14,000 words.

These were words I puzzled over, struggled over, and refined but now were vanished forever into the ether of cyberspace. And I knew the truth was that I deleted them for a reason – they just weren't good enough. I tried my best, but they just didn't work.

As I end 2024 that's a feeling I've felt a lot.

There have been work projects that I spent hours in planning over that never happened. There have been things around the house I tried really hard to fix, only for them to be unfixable. There have been many places I worked, and I worked hard, only to enter 2025 with them having evaporated behind me. If I'm honest, it makes me a little leery of working quite as hard this year, knowing so much work can evaporate.

Yet, two things are helping me this morning get ready to put my hand back to the grindstone this year.

First, the lost work is an offering. In one of Paul's letters he deals with the matter of bondservants toiling on projects that aren't there own that carry a high degree of futility. Yet, Paul says the work isn't wasted, it is an offering.

Colossians 3: [23] Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, [24] knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. (ESV)

While that work may be futile from an earthly standpoint (like so much laundry or house cleaning or presentations that are scrapped) it is still an offering. It is held out, open handed, as a divine offering. It is a beautiful thing, the taking of ephemeral work to be valued by an eternal watcher. If I wrote them with a right heart, those 14,000 words were an offering not a failure.

Second, the lost work is craft. Our culture often thinks of work as means to an end, but for centuries that is not what work was. It was a craft. The craft of woodworking, or iron smithing, or science, or letters. Every failure brought the craftsman closer to a greatness of craft. I think that's one of the reasons the ancient teacher of Israel says this:

Ecclesiastes 5:[18] Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot....[19] to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. (ESV)

The toil itself is meaningful, not just what it produces. To accept that we are mortal and small and to rejoice at the craft in front of us can actually be a source of joy. Each one of those 14,000 deleted words was me improving my craft. (And to be honest I still need to delete far more.) And the craft is glorious. I can see the difference in quality between the first sentences I wrote in 2024 and the last ones.

So if you are like me, looking back at 2024 and seeing wasted work, take heart.

Work is an offering that someone far better than a reader or boss values.

Work is a craft that is beautiful in itself, an endless and glorious chase.

So let us take up our work in 2025, knowing no time we put our hand to the grindstone and work hard is wasted in the end.