I Had been cleaning the house for hours. As I came clumping and bumping up the stairs with the roaring vacuum cleaner, my husband greeted me with a big grin. "Having fun?" he asked.

I disentangled myself from the electric cord, and gave him my grim-determination look. "Not really," I replied.

That look and that answer—as he well knew after many years of being married to me—were precisely the problems that his smile and question were intended to dissolve. And I—after many years of being married to him—got the message, loud and clear. I knew that my husband was suggesting in a tender, roundabout way, that I had been cleaning with a tense doggedness that left no room for joy. He was reminding me that, while we may not be able to choose some of our daily assignments, we certainly can choose how we approach the accomplishing of them.

It seems to be part of human nature to resent the effort that must be expended in order to attain a desirable goal. I wanted a clean house but wasn't enjoying the work I had to do to get it. The ten-year-old wants to play the piano but resists practicing his scales. We want our checkbooks to balance but aren't so willing to track down that elusive seventeen cents.

All of us have jobs to do. These tasks range from something as uncomplicated as housecleaning to something as hazardous as military missions. The way we feel about carrying out our duties depends a great deal on who we perceive ourselves to be.

In the book of Genesis in the Bible are two accounts about who man is. In the first chapter, God creates man, both male and female, in His own image and likeness and gives His creation dominion over a universe described as being "very good." In the second chapter of Genesis, a very different sort of man is depicted as formed from the dust of the ground by a different kind of god, (an anthropomorphic god). This Adam man and the wife taken from his own rib almost immediately separate themselves from their creator through disobedience. As mortal sinners they are thrown out of paradise, condemned to a lifetime of sweaty toil and eventual return to the dust they came from.

Which kind of man do you want to be? We do have a choice. If our basic, bedrock concept of ourselves is that we are, like Adam, physical beings living out a limited existence in a material universe, then it is not surprising that much of our day seems to consist of boring, repetitious, and frustrating labor.

However, if we identify ourselves with the man described in the first chapter of Genesis, we can approach our activities as opportunities to express or make manifest the qualities of the good and loving God who made us in His own image and likeness. Assigned tasks—even the ones that seem tedious—can become arenas where God's qualities are becoming apparent. The strength and intelligence—yes, even the enthusiasm—with which our tasks are accomplished are not skills or talents we have to generate from within ourselves. They are qualities we can learn to express because, as God's spiritual idea, man already possesses them.

After my husband's gentle reminder got my thoughts on a more spiritual track and dissolved the grim determination with which I had been attacking the housecleaning, what happened? Well, no fairy godmother or elves turned up to take over the job! In fact, the physical activity didn't change a bit, but the way I was thinking about it did. I saw that even housecleaning could be a way to express God's qualities. Instead of resenting the noisy, cumbersome device I was lugging up the stairs, I began to be grateful that I had such a fast and efficient means of getting rid of the dirt in my house. I was grateful, too, that I had the vigor and dexterity to operate it. I began to sing hymns over the roar and finished my task with the smile that had been missing a while before.

In our daily round, we find that many of our duties are assigned to us because of the various "hats" we wear. That is, the human titles that identify us as family members, employees, community volunteers, and so on, carry with them certain responsibilities. Whether we are aware of it or not, each one of us possesses another kind of "hat"—our spiritual identity as a child of God. The possession of this "hat" suggests a continuing duty, an open-ended term of employment with infinite possibilities. The job description that goes with this "hat" can be summarized in this statement of the Master, Christ Jesus: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

Does this assignment seem a little daunting? Mrs. Eddy, in her book Science and Health, shows that this is not some impossible, onerous task but a wonderful spiritual adventure. She writes: "Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause,— wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory."

Through reason and revelation, Mrs. Eddy grasped the great fact that because man is the image and likeness of God, Spirit, his being must be entirely spiritual, perfect as the Father. Yes, proving this involves hard work. Make no mistake about it. The five physical senses vehemently argue that man is a mixture of mind and matter, good and evil; it is not always easy to deny this evidence. But Mrs. Eddy was willing to work out the implications inherent in her discovery of the nature of true being until she understood this great truth clearly enough to heal herself and others and give the world the very Science of Life.

Out of her own life experience she reminds us: "There is no excellence without labor; and the time to work, is now. Only by persistent, unremitting, straightforward toil; by turning neither to the right nor to the left, seeking no other pursuit or pleasure than that which cometh from God, can you win and wear the crown of the faithful" (Miscellaneous Writings).

Without a doubt, the process of discovering and demonstrating our true, spiritual identity necessitates vigorous mental housecleaning—getting rid of all kinds of unlovely and fearful thoughts in order that the strength and beauty that belong to our real nature can become apparent. This purification of consciousness is one step in the process of spiritual growth and leads naturally to the next step: putting into practice what we are learning about our real identity. In other words, living our lives in ways that express those good qualities which are ours by reflection.

The "persistent, unremitting, straightforward toil" that this process requires need not be tedious or grim if we remember to identify ourselves correctly. God's work is done. We are not involved in remaking the universe, but in revealing it in all its glory. We are not the Adam man, tilling the ground by the sweat of our brows. Rather, we are like someone who holds a wonderful gift in his hands. The energy used in unwrapping this gift is expended with joyous anticipation of discovering what is inside. And in the infinitude of God's allness, we are assured that there will always be another "package" waiting to be unwrapped.

It is surely possible to feel happy about doing "what we gotta do." Learning to express the qualities that bring healing to mankind requires a lot of hard work. But reminding ourselves often that this is a labor of love brings joy—right in the middle of the process.