When You Get What You Deserve at Work
You generally get what you deserve after a day's work. At least that's what I find.
Some days you work hard, things flow freely, you accomplish your goals and objectives, your results show it.
Some days you work hard, things flow like molasses, you accomplish little, your results show it.
Then there are "disaster" days: you start working and everything "hits the fan" all at once, you accomplish nothing and you're ready to pull your hair out.
Last week, during a "disaster day" I learned an important lesson I want to share with you. It started when my assistant messed up an important piece of office machinery first thing in the morning that wound up requiring my attention for the rest of the day. Worse, the reason things were messed up was because my assistant was not, in my opinion, attending properly to his work. And so, as it became clear how screwed up this expensive office machine really was, and how much time I was having to put into fixing it (small businesses don't have a "staff" for these sorts of things), my impatience and, yes, anger, built up.
So what happened to my recognizing that this situation was part of God's plan to help me to rely solely on Him, and to accept this "disaster" as a means to turn to Him in this moment? I don't know - you tell me!
Okay, so I reacted exactly as I shouldn't, down to getting angry (which really was excessive, given the situation). But then, a few days later, I came across Psalm 39: 10-11. I realized that not only should I have turned to the Lord - who I'm sure would have helped me handle this all much better had I done so - but that I probably got exactly what I deserved at that moment. And thusly, I could have prayed these words:
Being the sinner I am, it occurred to me that it would make perfect sense for God to not only test my faith, to encourage me to turn to Him, but He really could have been giving me nothing more than what I deserved.
Of course, it's not really good to try to interpret what God's doing all the time. It's really beyond our comprehension much of the time. But this really struck me this time. I figured I was chastened, and while God didn't consume my office machine, that calm, professional demeanor I had built up and was so dear to me was certainly consumed in mere minutes!
Really, we sinners do get what we deserve sometimes, don't we?
Some days you work hard, things flow freely, you accomplish your goals and objectives, your results show it.
Some days you work hard, things flow like molasses, you accomplish little, your results show it.
Then there are "disaster" days: you start working and everything "hits the fan" all at once, you accomplish nothing and you're ready to pull your hair out.
Last week, during a "disaster day" I learned an important lesson I want to share with you. It started when my assistant messed up an important piece of office machinery first thing in the morning that wound up requiring my attention for the rest of the day. Worse, the reason things were messed up was because my assistant was not, in my opinion, attending properly to his work. And so, as it became clear how screwed up this expensive office machine really was, and how much time I was having to put into fixing it (small businesses don't have a "staff" for these sorts of things), my impatience and, yes, anger, built up.
So what happened to my recognizing that this situation was part of God's plan to help me to rely solely on Him, and to accept this "disaster" as a means to turn to Him in this moment? I don't know - you tell me!
Okay, so I reacted exactly as I shouldn't, down to getting angry (which really was excessive, given the situation). But then, a few days later, I came across Psalm 39: 10-11. I realized that not only should I have turned to the Lord - who I'm sure would have helped me handle this all much better had I done so - but that I probably got exactly what I deserved at that moment. And thusly, I could have prayed these words:
Remove thy stroke from me;
I am spent by the blows of thy hand.
When thou dost chasten man
with rebukes for sin,
though dost consume like a moth what is dear to him;
surely every man is a mere breath.
Being the sinner I am, it occurred to me that it would make perfect sense for God to not only test my faith, to encourage me to turn to Him, but He really could have been giving me nothing more than what I deserved.
Of course, it's not really good to try to interpret what God's doing all the time. It's really beyond our comprehension much of the time. But this really struck me this time. I figured I was chastened, and while God didn't consume my office machine, that calm, professional demeanor I had built up and was so dear to me was certainly consumed in mere minutes!
Really, we sinners do get what we deserve sometimes, don't we?
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