Grace and The Daily Grind at Work
We were talking about the effect of God's grace last week - specifically during a time when I started a new job just around the time of the 9/11 attacks a couple of blocks from my office in Manhattan. So with that in mind, here's more about grace - this time focusing on the role of grace in day-to-day tasks of work, rather than anything particularly dramatic. So we start with the typical daily grind we all face as we go to work each day.
At times, I've wished I could store up my work, kind of like I store up savings for a rainy day. But the best I do is stay a step ahead of the flow of tasks that never end. Hence, work, at times, takes on the character of a kind of daily grind that you face each day, a relentless stream of "to dos," crises, deadlines, etc.
In the face of this, sometimes just getting down to work each day seems like a mountain to climb, especially if you fall behind a step or two in your work. Of course, if you stop and think - better still pause and pray - you know its not really a mountain. And, by the way, if your emotions fight your intellect here, you can develop the discipline to recognize what really is and act on that rather than get stuck in what you merely feel and give in to that. With this discipline, you know that if you just put one foot in front of the other and tackle each item - whether its boring, or annoying, or frustrating, or whatever - then that item gets done, you move to the next, and soon you're back on top of things.
Something similar goes on in our spiritual lives. We can't save up grace and put it aside for a rainy day the way we can with our savings. Each and every time we need His help, He will provide sufficient grace. There's no vault we can go to for our secret stash of grace and pull out what we need at just the moment we think we need it. I'm guessing God works this way so that we won't rely on ourselves, but will learn to rely on Him, solely on Him.
I'm also thinking that's the reason he allows temptations to get at us. Much as I pray for this or that temptation to be taken from me, certain things keep tugging at me. I can either give in or turn to my Heavenly Father for the grace I need to resist temptation. In that sense, temptation helps us grow closer to God.
So the connection between our daily grind at work and our spiritual lives becomes clearer now. Just as we can't store up our work and drag it out of our "work vault" on days where our work becomes a real grind, so we can't store up graces and drag them out just when we think they're needed. At work, we have to get down to the business of the day no matter how we feel and put one foot in front of the other. In our spiritual lives, we have to turn to God moment to moment and beg the graces we need as well.
Now imagine that we develop the habit of always turning to God in the midst of the "daily grind" days at work. Instead of just pushing ourselves to put one foot in front of the other, we utter a simple prayer and offer up this awful grinding at work to God, let's say, for the suffering souls in purgatory.
The key here is the habit of calling on God throughout the day, and really REALLY relying on Him, rather than on ourselves. The thing is, it takes a lot of humility to do this. You're got to get rid of thinking you're so strong, smart, competent, skillful - whatever. In the end, you're all those things because they're gifts from God. All you've done is develop those gifts - something that you don't get to take credit for, because that's just what you ought to be doing.
I hope you can see that being open to God's grace in the daily grind at work will help you grow more holy. And what other more important purpose could there possibly be for our work?
At times, I've wished I could store up my work, kind of like I store up savings for a rainy day. But the best I do is stay a step ahead of the flow of tasks that never end. Hence, work, at times, takes on the character of a kind of daily grind that you face each day, a relentless stream of "to dos," crises, deadlines, etc.
In the face of this, sometimes just getting down to work each day seems like a mountain to climb, especially if you fall behind a step or two in your work. Of course, if you stop and think - better still pause and pray - you know its not really a mountain. And, by the way, if your emotions fight your intellect here, you can develop the discipline to recognize what really is and act on that rather than get stuck in what you merely feel and give in to that. With this discipline, you know that if you just put one foot in front of the other and tackle each item - whether its boring, or annoying, or frustrating, or whatever - then that item gets done, you move to the next, and soon you're back on top of things.
Something similar goes on in our spiritual lives. We can't save up grace and put it aside for a rainy day the way we can with our savings. Each and every time we need His help, He will provide sufficient grace. There's no vault we can go to for our secret stash of grace and pull out what we need at just the moment we think we need it. I'm guessing God works this way so that we won't rely on ourselves, but will learn to rely on Him, solely on Him.
I'm also thinking that's the reason he allows temptations to get at us. Much as I pray for this or that temptation to be taken from me, certain things keep tugging at me. I can either give in or turn to my Heavenly Father for the grace I need to resist temptation. In that sense, temptation helps us grow closer to God.
So the connection between our daily grind at work and our spiritual lives becomes clearer now. Just as we can't store up our work and drag it out of our "work vault" on days where our work becomes a real grind, so we can't store up graces and drag them out just when we think they're needed. At work, we have to get down to the business of the day no matter how we feel and put one foot in front of the other. In our spiritual lives, we have to turn to God moment to moment and beg the graces we need as well.
Now imagine that we develop the habit of always turning to God in the midst of the "daily grind" days at work. Instead of just pushing ourselves to put one foot in front of the other, we utter a simple prayer and offer up this awful grinding at work to God, let's say, for the suffering souls in purgatory.
The key here is the habit of calling on God throughout the day, and really REALLY relying on Him, rather than on ourselves. The thing is, it takes a lot of humility to do this. You're got to get rid of thinking you're so strong, smart, competent, skillful - whatever. In the end, you're all those things because they're gifts from God. All you've done is develop those gifts - something that you don't get to take credit for, because that's just what you ought to be doing.
I hope you can see that being open to God's grace in the daily grind at work will help you grow more holy. And what other more important purpose could there possibly be for our work?
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