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Young Mother Gazing at Her Child Adolphe-William
Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905) Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art |
What is the Purpose of Your Work? By Leah Smith | posted 9/1/2002 I love my job.
Well, okay, MOST days I love my job.
Some days there are too many dirty diapers and not enough
smiles, but most days I enjoy it.
As a stay-at-home-mom of a 2-year old boy, I have gotten
accustomed to being messy and muddy, have memorized the entire
“Elmo” video library, and have even learned how to make a fairly
decent truck noise. I’m
not particularly fond of the diapers, the tantrums, or the days when
he throws up all over me, but I DO love seeing how his brain is
learning to interpret the world.
His 3-word sentences are miracles to me, and I am even
beginning to appreciate toddler humor. (Current favorite joke: the
word JELLY. It sends him into hysterics – inexplicable, but
hilarious to watch). I often have
struggled with aspects of my jobs.
As a teacher, I always woke up ready to go to work – eager
to tackle that day’s challenge and to see my kids.
But as I lay awake into the wee hours making notes on student
papers and planning ways to help improve their individual writing, I
would often lament the long hours.
Or in the middle of a long meeting that I felt was getting
nowhere, I would get frustrated with what I thought were the closed
minds of my co-workers. My girlfriends
and I are doing a Bible Study over the summer.
We do bits and pieces on our own, and then chat about it
informally over our children’s busy noises when we get together
for play dates. It’s
about the names of God, and we’ve really enjoyed it.
I was going through the lessons, marking the bible verses,
finding the key words, etc when one day’s question stopped me
short. “What is Your
Purpose in Life?” Gulp.
She can’t be serious – right?
I mean, questions like “How do you think Bathsheba felt?”
are one thing, but “What is Your Purpose in Life?”!
Whoa. Talk about
a BIG question! I’ll
admit, I skipped the question at first and then spent a series of
days in prayer about it. I
asked God to show me what my purpose was in life. I felt like what
God was telling me was that my purpose was to raise Godly children,
and to use my time and flexibility of being at home to reach out to
my friends and to show them the love of Jesus.
Sounds relatively simple, huh?
Then I thought about my life – the day-to-day living of it.
How much of what I do relates toward my God-given purpose?
I realized I could go for days without doing more than saying
brief grace-prayers with Henry and I could go weeks without reaching
out to my unchurched friends. Whoa.
It was like it was “review time” at work and God was
helping me list my “areas of focus” for the rest of the year. It is so easy to
do the day-to-day work. For
me: to change the diapers, fix dinner, throw in the endless loads of
laundry….or before: to grade the papers, teach the classes, go to
the meetings. But
it’s the BIG picture – my PURPOSE in my work that I so often
forget. I think God
wants me to be more concerned with the PURPOSE than with getting
bogged down in the details.
Now don’t get me wrong: the diapers, laundry, play, and mud
are important - but if that’s all I do, and if I don’t check in
with God about what He wants me to do – then I’m missing the big
picture. I
have realized that sometimes the laundry can wait.
Sometimes we can eat frozen pizza for dinner.
Sometimes it is more important for me to have my friend who
is a single mom over – or to watch her daughter for a day.
Sometimes it is more important to talk over the fence with a
neighbor than to put the towels in the dryer.
Sometimes cleaning Henry up can wait – and it is more
important to play with him in the mud and tell him about God and all
the cool muddy things that God made.
What about you?
What is the PURPOSE of your work?
What is God calling you to do? Grace & Peace, Leah Smith For
we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good
works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV) Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men. Colossians 3:23 (NIV) p.s. If you are interested in a book to read about God and vocation, I would suggest Eugene Peterson’s Under the Unpredictable Plant. It is really about pastoring as a vocation, but I found it very insightful about work in general. In my mind, I just substituted “teaching” for “pastoring" and found it helpful – it encouraged me to “hang in there” with a job that overwhelmed me, but that I felt God was calling me to do. . . . |
