This blog post explores George Herbert’s poem The Elixir as a profound theology of faith and work, revealing how ordinary labor becomes holy when done in love and obedience to God. Drawing on Herbert’s metaphor of alchemy, it argues that intention—not status, visibility, or outcome—is what transforms work from drudgery into worship. In a culture driven by achievement and recognition, the post invites readers to recover a vision of vocation where every task, however small, is infused with divine significance when done “for Him.”
I’ve always had an appreciation for the seventeenth-century metaphysical poets. Figures like John Donne and George Herbert wrote with a rare combination of theological density and literary beauty. For example, John Donne’s fierce and unsettling sonnet Batter My Heart captures the desperate prayer of a soul who knows it cannot reform itself apart from God’s invasive grace. This is the kind of literature that doesn’t merely inform; it confronts and reshapes you.
But when I stepped into my role as Executive Director of CFWLA, I expected very different wells to draw from. Surely key Biblical texts (“whatever you do, do heartily as unto the Lord”) and a robust theology of work were my new fare. Little did I expect to find Herbert offering a compelling and accessible theological vision of faith and work.
The Herbert offering I refer to is his poem “The Elixir.”
The Elixir
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee:
Not rudely, as a beast,
To runne into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection.
A man that looks on glasse,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
And then the heav’n espie.
All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture (for thy sake)
Will not grow bright and clean.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgerie divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and th’ action fine.
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for lesse be told.
At first glance, The Elixir seems almost disarmingly simple. Herbert speaks of performing an ordinary task (i.e. sweeping a room) that would rarely draw notice or applause. But the poem’s quiet power lies in its central claim: it is not the nature of the work that makes it holy, but the love with which it is done. Herbert writes that when a person performs sweeping “as for Thy laws,” the action itself is transformed. The broom remains a broom. The room remains a room. But the work becomes beautiful.
The “elixir” of the title is Herbert’s governing metaphor. Drawing on the language of alchemy, he imagines a substance that can transmute base metal into gold. Spiritually speaking, that elixir is love for God. When love is added to labor—working intentionally, obediently, and joyfully to God—the most mundane task is suffused with divine significance. What the world dismisses as drudgery becomes, in Herbert’s striking phrase, “drudgery divine.”
“It is not the nature of the work that makes it holy, but the love with which it is done.”
This vision carries profound implications for how we understand work today. Herbert collapses the false divide between sacred and secular. And he reminds us that holiness is not confined to explicitly religious activities. Worship is not only what happens on Sunday, and vocation is not limited to pastors or missionaries. God is just as present in the kitchen, the classroom, the office, the warehouse, and the studio, as He is in the sanctuary.
Equally important is Herbert’s emphasis on intention. In a culture obsessed with visibility, recognition, outcomes, and deliverables, The Elixir reorients us towards faithfulness. God, Herbert insists, is not impressed by scale or status. What matters is whether our work is done “for Him.” Even frustration and monotony are not wasted when they are endured in love and obedience.
Four hundred years later, The Elixir still speaks with startling clarity. It tells us that no day need be wasted and no act of faithful labor is unseen. In a city such as Los Angeles defined by making impressions through achievement, Herbert gently but firmly reminds us that the true gold of our work is not found in what others think or what we produce, but in whom we work for.
Robert Covolo is the Executive Director at the Center for Faith + Work Los Angeles.