The very first piece of furniture my wife and I bought together was a futon from Target. It was $200. I can still remember putting it together in our tiny 250 square foot apartment in St. Louis, thinking I had just acquired the steal of the century. A comfortable futon for just $200? My grandparents still have the furniture in their home from 1972, so surely my $200 futon would last 50 years, too, right?

Two months after we bought that futon, it broke. It wasn’t from overuse, we didn’t jump on it. It just broke. Snapped in the middle. It was un-sit-able. We held on to it for several more weeks, thinking maybe it would just even out.

It did not. We eventually threw it out.

I think the easiest thing to do today is to stop putting forth effort in our daily schedules. Fewer showers, relaxed deadlines, shaving less, wearing pants less often. If we aren’t going to experience the same results as before, why put in the full effort, right?

What this mindset does is it makes our hearts hard towards hard work. Hard work is a core tenant to humanity as God created us. The first thing He instructed the newly minted human race to do was, you guessed it, begin working.

I challenge you, as we adjust to our new normal, to continue improving your work ethic. Because what you will quickly find out is that results mirror the effort you put forth. If you buy a $200 couch, you’ll likely find yourself putting it on the curb in a matter of months. Similarly, if you stop working hard at your job, at parenting, or at any of your other responsibilities, you will see a noticeable dip in the quality of your results.

Don’t let this new world tempt you into getting lazy. Keep working hard. Because you get out what you put in. Whatever we do, we should be doing it for the glory of God. And that includes the effort we put into our work.

-Matt