Time to Cross the Bridge at Work

It's time to cross the bridge at work. "The bridge" consists of the week before and the week after Labor Day. We're moving from the relative calm of summer to...well, whatever the normal course and pace of work brings us in our particular occupations.

This year we'll tread gingerly. In addition to the usual ramping up of activity we might expect, there's a lot swirling around us, beginning with the ramping up of the "vaccine push." It's in third gear now, with the uptick in "Delta Variant" COVID infections. We'll skip the specifics for now. But if you're following what's been going on, you're likely aware of all that's happening, some or much of which may impact your life and your work.

So today we step onto that bridge accompanied by some special spiritual passages that should help us in our crossing. As we did these recent weeks of relatively slow work activity, these passages will - we hope - give us some practical support as they bolster our spiritual lives. Doing our best at work can be tough enough for most of us without the distractions that come with this latest phase of - as we've called it from the start - this C-Virus Mess.

So here goes with our first passage from Father Gerald Vann:

“Though I should walk in the valley of darkness, says the Psalmist, yet will I fear no evil: for Thou art with me. If we want to be holy – and happy – we have to learn to love God enough to make our will identical with His, so that when we say, Thy will be done, we really mean it, not only about this and that but about everything. We need therefore a strong sense of God’s providence, and a deep love of God’s providence. What does it mean, to love God’s providence? It does not mean, in the first place, the fatalism that makes no efforts. On the contrary, the efforts that we can make are part of God’s plan; events do depend on our free-will. Nor does it mean that purely natural placidity of temperament that some people enjoy, so that nothing seems able to ruffle their composure. Nor again is it a merely passive resignation, as the word is often understood: a reluctant admission that what can’t be cured must be endured. No: the Lord is our Shepherd; He is with us. And we are to have faith and trust that His plan is a loving plan: that though things are very black, His wisdom and love and power are there to save and to heal, to bring good out of the evil. You know how a little boy, helping his father with a job of carpentry, will concentrate on some little thing that his father gives him to do, not seeing how the finished work will emerge from these preliminaries, but content, trusting implicitly that the job will be finished, and will be successful. We should do the same with our lives and all the things that make up our lives: God gives us this little bit of His work to do for Him, and we ought to have the child’s trust that His skill and His love will see the work through, and concentrate on our own minute share in it, in doing that well. So we should be saved from that solicitude against which our Lord warns us. He does not tell us that we must not work, must not plan ahead; He does not tell us that everything will be done for us; of course not. But He does tell us that we must not be always worrying and fretting and making a great commotion, as though we and not He were responsible for the universe.”

There's a lot packed into this paragraph. It applies to many - actually all - aspects of our lives. But let's here apply it to our work. 

First, "Thy will  be done": It encompasses everything. There's no selectivity here. We don't get to decide when to say it and mean it. We say and mean it all the time. 

Second, this doesn't mean we lay back and just "go with the flow." We're expected to work and work hard. We're expected to plan ahead. We're not passive; we're active. But in all our activity, God's Will prevails. So recognize that and sincerely declare it. We want success, but that may not be God's Will in this particular case at this particular time. If so, we accept our failures, knowing God will somehow turn these into something good for us over the long run.

Third, the example of the little boy helping his carpenter father isn't just a charming story. It's meant to be taken literally. It doesn't matter if we're CEO of a Big Tech company that seems to rule the world (especially these days). We're still that little boy. We perform our tasks in this spirit and only in this spirit. None of us is "world-beaters." We're little boys helping Our Father.

Finally, we've been admonished - we who continue to carry the cares of the world on our shoulders. Once and for all, it's time to set aside our anxiety over what can go wrong and our pretending we can fix all problems and right all wrongs: "we must not be always worrying and fretting and making a great commotion, as though we and not He were responsible for the universe."

When we pray, "My God, my all," that's what we mean.

More next time...