In my daily Bible reading yesterday (I was catching up in Exodus), I was struck by a sharp contrast between how Satan and the world counts what is valuable work versus idleness, and how God counts it:

Exo 5:1 And afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, Thus says Jehovah the God of Israel, Let My people go that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.
2 But Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah that I should listen to His voice to let Israel go? I do not know Jehovah, and I also will not let Israel go.
8 And the quota of the bricks which they made previously, you shall still place upon them; you shall not diminish any of it, for they are idle; therefore they cry out, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God.

Pharaoh, signifying Satan ruling God's people with his tyrranical world system, considers that when we take time to meet together and enjoy the Lord, we are idle in relation to the building up of his world system. This is in sharp contrast to what God considers productive work versus idleness:

Mat 20:1 ¹For the kingdom of the heavens is like a ²man, who is a householder, who went out early in the ³morning to hire ⁴workmen for his ^5avineyard.
2 And having ¹agreed with the workmen for a ²denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3 And he went out about the ¹third hour and saw others standing ²idle in the ³marketplace,
4 And to those he said, You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you. And they went.

 Note 3²: This word indicates that whoever does not work in the kingdom of the heavens is standing idle in the world.

In the Lord's assessment, we might be in the marketplace, even busily occupied in the business of this world, but we are idle as far as His work is concerned. Only the work that we do in His vineyard--His kingdom that produces fruit to satisfy God--counts as work. Everything else is idleness.

Lord, I repent of my vain system of measuring so many things that the world regards as valuable. I want to take your reckoning of productive work as my reckoning, and your reckoning of idleness as my reckoning