The Commandments of God and The Reality of Work II

So my meditations yesterday morning did little to improve the day for me.

I showed up with a sincere attitude of wanting to try to be better.  More productive.  Have a better attitude.  What I got when I arrived was a reminder of the fact that I am a small cog in a larger machine.  My roles, as I interpreted them, were answering of questions, reviewer of documents that will never see the light of day, and theoretical holder of opinions that are assumed.

It is hard to keep your spirits up in the face of such seeming irrelevance.

And yet there are the commands I listed yesterday:  do not be man-pleasers or work for eye-service but do work willingly and heartily; be submissive; be well pleasing; show good fidelity; adorn the doctrine of God.

And so I tried to carry on.  I tried to be cheerful and diligent as I reviewed page after page.  I tried to work hard all day.  I tried to keep an even keel when problems came to my attention.

And I left feeling utterly useless and forlorn.

Why?  Because the reality is that even though I tried (or thought I tried) to adapt a better attitude the reality is that the work did not change at all.  My place within the work did not change at all.  And my interpretation by those around me did not change at all. 

Did I feel the reward of God as I drove home yesterday, the reward that comes from being a good witness or carrying out His Will?  I am afraid and ashamed to say no.  I went home feeling empty and used, a vehicle for the devices and plans of others.  There was no sunlight breaking through the clouds, no sense of the divine invading my space, merely the reality of the drive home as most of my other drives home have been.

But that, of course, does not change the commands.  And so I will be at it again, trying my best to meet the commands that God has set out for those that work, in hopes that I have been missing something critical in my own attitude and that, with a little more prayer and practice, the commandments of God can become my reality of work.