A New Look at Work
In the mental shelf space where a Bible verse or someone's birthday could be, there's a picture of a wide-eyed kitten from posters past. Beneath the kitten's memorable gaze was the inscription, "Work fascinates me. I can look at it for hours."
I have. I've looked at work for hours, days, years, and decades. My vantage point on vocation has been worth enough for me to make a living helping others find it in roles as a job and college counselor. In recent days, I've looked at work differently.
Unemployed at the moment, I had a little epiphany in the most unlikely of places, on an assembly line. As cerebral palsy impacts my muscles significantly, I didn't expect to be here. I didn't expect that repeated movement of my uncooperative muscles would provide much value. My mind, I've been told, is my moneymaker, and I've gotten plenty of gratitude over the years to confirm and perhaps narrow that perception to myopia. Henry David Thoreau's warning that men become tools of our tools, apparently, can apply just as readily to mental tools as to mechanical ones.
I have. I've looked at work for hours, days, years, and decades. My vantage point on vocation has been worth enough for me to make a living helping others find it in roles as a job and college counselor. In recent days, I've looked at work differently.
Unemployed at the moment, I had a little epiphany in the most unlikely of places, on an assembly line. As cerebral palsy impacts my muscles significantly, I didn't expect to be here. I didn't expect that repeated movement of my uncooperative muscles would provide much value. My mind, I've been told, is my moneymaker, and I've gotten plenty of gratitude over the years to confirm and perhaps narrow that perception to myopia. Henry David Thoreau's warning that men become tools of our tools, apparently, can apply just as readily to mental tools as to mechanical ones.
As I worked this unimposing little machine to seal individual bags as a volunteer in our church's Leave It Better feeding program, I was reminded that worthwhile work doesn't always look instantly impressive. It can go on through the machine at least as often as through the Masters degree. Each buzz sealed a bag. Each bag, and my prayers with it, would feed a soul as well as a stomach.
I considered myself instructed. I considered myself more open to the possibility that my next work might not include as much of the social prestige as I found in college and career counseling. I might have to find value in work solely because God gave it to me and enabled me to do it, although probably not on an assembly line. I might get to prove the principle Eric Liddell's father insisted on in the movie Chariots of Fire when he tells his son, "You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection." What my hand found to do, I told myself and my Maker with the perfected abstraction of a job not yet undertaken that can slide easily into another form of arrogance, I would honor Ecclesiastes 9:10 and do it with all my might.
The pattern of the Gospels, says Pastor Jon Courson, is that after teaching comes testing. That testing may come soon. While mulling over the message of how my Maker can use even the most prosaic motions and machinery, I got a call. Thursday, I'll be interviewing for an opportunity to help high school students with disabilities enter the workforce. For kids in the becoming process at this adolescent vocational crossroads, I know two forces within are pretty evenly matched. In the teen, there is fear whether the emerging adult has anything at all to contribute in the world of work. "They have trouble," says one father of disabled teens, "visualizing the future because they're afraid of it." Counterbalancing and perhaps overcompensating for this fear is the untamed ego which defies gravity and the law of averages. Others may struggle, the untamed ego insists, but I have Greatness that will be repeatedly reinforced.
Will I get to be the tiebreaker? Will I get to be the motorist gently tapping the horn from behind at the crossroads of vocational indecision? Ready, at least for the moment, to do work in whatever form it presents itself, will it be my honor as a counselor once again to urge that faithfulness, and even well-meaning failing forward in the entry-level opportunities available to high school students has value for its own sake? Will I get to prove Martin Luther right in the plastic environs of McDonald's when he insists that God hides behind the mask of everyday details in any job? Time will tell, but at least for a while, I'll be as wide-eyed as that kitten on the poster at the wonder that I might get to guide anyone.
I considered myself instructed. I considered myself more open to the possibility that my next work might not include as much of the social prestige as I found in college and career counseling. I might have to find value in work solely because God gave it to me and enabled me to do it, although probably not on an assembly line. I might get to prove the principle Eric Liddell's father insisted on in the movie Chariots of Fire when he tells his son, "You can praise God by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection." What my hand found to do, I told myself and my Maker with the perfected abstraction of a job not yet undertaken that can slide easily into another form of arrogance, I would honor Ecclesiastes 9:10 and do it with all my might.
The pattern of the Gospels, says Pastor Jon Courson, is that after teaching comes testing. That testing may come soon. While mulling over the message of how my Maker can use even the most prosaic motions and machinery, I got a call. Thursday, I'll be interviewing for an opportunity to help high school students with disabilities enter the workforce. For kids in the becoming process at this adolescent vocational crossroads, I know two forces within are pretty evenly matched. In the teen, there is fear whether the emerging adult has anything at all to contribute in the world of work. "They have trouble," says one father of disabled teens, "visualizing the future because they're afraid of it." Counterbalancing and perhaps overcompensating for this fear is the untamed ego which defies gravity and the law of averages. Others may struggle, the untamed ego insists, but I have Greatness that will be repeatedly reinforced.
Will I get to be the tiebreaker? Will I get to be the motorist gently tapping the horn from behind at the crossroads of vocational indecision? Ready, at least for the moment, to do work in whatever form it presents itself, will it be my honor as a counselor once again to urge that faithfulness, and even well-meaning failing forward in the entry-level opportunities available to high school students has value for its own sake? Will I get to prove Martin Luther right in the plastic environs of McDonald's when he insists that God hides behind the mask of everyday details in any job? Time will tell, but at least for a while, I'll be as wide-eyed as that kitten on the poster at the wonder that I might get to guide anyone.
EASY job- just BE the influence you wish you'd HAD.
ReplyDelete