Work Like You are Working for the
Lord
This job has been given to me to do. Therefore, it is a gift. Therefore, it is a privilege. Therefore, it is an offering I may make to God. Therefore, it is to be done gladly, if it is done for Him. Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God's way. In this job, not in some other, God looks for faithfulness. Elisabeth Elliot
Do you ever think about your work and how you do it? I had a conversation with one of my sister’s
and we were talking about jobs and some of the jobs we have had over the
years. I was telling her about my first
job in college. I worked for our local
Credit Union part-time while going to school.
If you want a humbling experience all you have to do is think back
to one of your first jobs and that will do it for most of us. My job at the Credit Union was to shred
documents and stuff statements in envelopes.
So here is a picture of how my day went when I worked at the
Credit Union. I would arrive around noon
after my classes were over and I would go to the break room at the back of the
building. There was a big industrial
size shredder and stacked next to it was a 5 foot tall stack of greenbar reports. For those of you who aren’t as old as dirt
like me, a greenbar report is one long report printed on one long continuous
piece of perforated paper.
I would stand at the shredder and feed these greenbar reports into
the shredder. A trash bag was underneath
to catch the shredded paper. I would
fill bags, tie them off with a bread tie and toss them out the back door. So imagine doing this every day after school
for 5 hours. It can be tedious and
boring.
So I decided to challenge myself.
My challenge was to see how many more bags I could shred than the day
before. When I first started shredding I
started out only feeding one report into the shredder at a time. Well once I issued my challenge to myself to
beat the count from the day before, I had to become innovative. So I would line up 3 reports on the floor and
feed the end sheets into the shredder and then I could sit back and watch it
run since the reports were all connected together. One day I got a little over-ambitious and fed
too many into the shredder at once. It
jammed. That was the day I learned
how to repair a shredder.
So every day I would do a few more bags than the previous day. It became the highlight of my day to look out
the back door and see the stack of bags filled with shredded documents.
Do you know what this job taught me? It taught me to do the best job I can at
whatever work I do. It doesn’t matter what
the job is, it is the attitude that I use when I am doing it. This job taught me perseverance, integrity,
trustworthiness and how not to be bored out of my mind shredding documents. It
taught me about work ethic and giving 100% to the person who pays you to do the
job. It taught me patience and
humility. Have you realized that when
you first start your career whatever it may be; you will always start at the
bottom. You don’t go immediately to CEO
if you work for someone else.
Your job is your training ground for God’s service. Everything we do in this life is for God’s
service not ours. Too many times we
forget that we are working for the Lord in every aspect of our life. He is our ultimate employer and part of the
reward for doing your job well is “you will receive the reward of the
inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.”
Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I want
to serve You to the best of my ability.
Thank you for those long ago jobs that taught me integrity,
perseverance, ethics, honesty and the value of hard work. Remind me that the job I hold today is
working for You in whatever capacity You see fit. Help me to reflect Jesus Christ to others by
the way I do my job today.
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