Where Value Is Earned
Day 188 – 7 July
Warmth in the Work
“With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men.” (Ephesians 6:7, NASB)
What Became of “Good Will”
Few phrases have been worn as smooth as “good will.” In modern speech it survives mostly as an accountant’s term, the mysterious extra value a business carries beyond its bricks and its stock, or else as a vague “goodwill gesture,” some small concession offered to grease a deal. Both uses have slowly drained the colour out of it, so that we reach for the words and feel next to nothing. Yet when Paul instructs servants to work “with good will,” he reaches for a word that still carried all its warmth, a word about the kindly regard one person truly holds towards another, and towards the work of their hands.
The Warmth Paul Meant
The word is εὐνοία (eunoia, “good will” or “benevolence”), and it is a rare one, appearing in this letter just the once. To feel its weight, it helps to see how the ancient world truly used it. In the language of diplomacy, eunoia (good will) named the favourable regard one city or ruler chose to extend to another, a benevolence that thawed a cold treaty into something nearer to friendship. In ordinary life it described the kindly disposition that lifted a relationship above mere transaction. One surviving Egyptian will, drawn up around the year 157, records a master granting freedom to five of his slaves, and the reason set down was their eunoia (good will) and affection towards him. Place that beside Paul’s charge and the force of it lands. He asks servants, people at the very foot of the social ladder, to bring to their daily labour the same willing benevolence that could move a master to sign away a person’s bondage. This was more than compliance. It was a disposition that actively wished the work, and the people, well.
More Than the Sale
A busy Saturday market shows the same thing at ground level. A man runs a fruit stall near the entrance, and he could, like plenty of others, simply take the money, fill the bag, and call the next in line. He does something more. He knows the regulars by name, asks the elderly gentleman whether his wife’s hip is mending, slips a slightly bruised yet sweet pear into the hand of a tired mother’s fretful toddler, and sends each customer off feeling met instead of merely served. None of that is required, and none of it appears on any price list. It is simply the warmth of a man who wishes his customers well, and it turns an ordinary row of crates into a place people are glad to return to. That surplus, the kindness no transaction could ever demand, is eunoia (good will) at work in the open air.
Glad, Even Unseen
This is the quality Paul asks us to carry into Tuesday. An unrequested favour, or a scrap of extra care poured into work no one will ever inspect, can be offered in one of two spirits. The same action, given grudgingly or given gladly, belongs to two different worlds. And this glad benevolence rests on something deeper than willpower, since the goodwill we are asked to give is first of all goodwill we have received. The God we serve is good at the very root of His being, and that goodness reaches us continually, unearned and freely given, filling a cup we can then pour out. So we are set free to wish our work and our workmates well, without calculation and without any need for applause. Goodwill of that kind leaves a mark. It softens a hard morning, lends dignity to a dull task, and sends the people around us back into their day the better for having crossed our path, whether a single soul ever notices or thanks us for it.
Declaration
Today I choose the spirit in which I work, and I choose warmth. The task no one asked me to do well, I will do well and gladly all the same. I refuse to let my service curdle into grudging duty, performed with a sigh and one eye on the clock. Instead I bring real good will to it, wishing the best for the people beside me and for the work itself, whether it is noticed or passes without a word. I can give this freely, because I have first been given to, out of a kindness I did nothing to earn. So I carry a warm and willing heart into the smallest, greyest corner of this day, and I let it change the temperature of everything I touch.
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