Time to Cross the Bridge at Work - Part 3

We've just passed the halfway point on the bridge that brings us from the week before Labor Day through the week after. As with last week, this week we focus our attention on a spiritual passage that can help us remain focused on our work despite some of the distractions now swirling around us. 

Besides the return of the C-Virus Mess, let's not forget the extraordinary natural disasters that have visited many of us, with varying impact. If you live on the Gulf Coast, you've likely absorbed some possible catastrophic impact from Hurricane Ida. Out west, the Caldor wild fires have threatened to devastate the Lake Tahoe community. Here in our neck of the woods we first took a left jab from the remnants of Hurricane Henri. Not pleasant. But then we came the body blow from the remnants of Hurricane Ida. That one turned out to be historic. In our area, in the course of only a few hours, we saw almost 9 inches of rain. Unheard of in these parts. The flooding was of a nature I've never seen before. I'll leave it at that, as many others suffered a lot worse than we did. 

Through it all, work called - and we answered. What other choice did we or do we have? 

Today's passage can be seen to address an array of circumstances beyond our control that reek havoc in our lives, including our work: 

- natural disasters like the ones we've recently faced: Some of us may have faced dangers during commuting to/from work; or had to spend normal work hours attending to damages at home; or a plethora of other delays, destruction, dislocations, etc. that derailed our work. 

- a work project at which we've worked long and hard: I've had a few of these that, inches from successful completion, were undercut by last-minute corporate reshuffling of priorities, capricious bosses deciding the project wasn't worth it after all, even clients who, after insisting that "X" was important, changed their minds for no good reason. I suspect you've encountered similar situations.

- personal distractions and temptations

- of course, our resurrected C-Virus Mess

All these and more can cause frustrations, anxiety, even anger. And if we allow such emotions to gain the upper hand, we've gone off track and will likely struggle to regain our equanimity before we can become focused and productive on the job. 

Let's follow our process of first, reading this passage slowly; and, when some particular words or phrases especially grab us, pausing to think/meditate in order to allow the intended message to penetrate our minds and hearts.

“Sometimes it is when we are mere spectators that we find it hardest not be agitated and to fret: we see some tragedy impending and we feel powerless to prevent it: but we must try to see that our fretting is really in the last resort a form of egoism, a lack of faith and trust in God and dependence on God: our business should be to pray hard (we need never be mere spectators) but then to try to say, Thy will be done. Sometimes it is when we have started, and slowly built up, some project that we feel convinced is good, is for God, and then it is wrecked by circumstances outside our control, we want to grumble, we want to rebel; but no, we should remind ourselves that we never really know, in our tiny glimpse of God’s plan, what in the long run is really failure and what is success. Sometimes it is over ourselves, our own state of soul, that we become agitated in the bad sense: we cannot seem to cope with this or that temptation, we cannot seem to improve; but once again we must try to live in the present: doing our very best here and now, and neither brooding over our past failures nor letting ourselves sink into a sort of practical despair about the future. All things are in the hands of God.

“Once again it is a question of training ourselves, and of starting in small ways. Think of some example of the sort of thing that causes you, individually, to become agitated and to fuss. It might be the missing of a train: you are on your way to some important duty, and it seems to be God’s will that you should do it; but you miss the train, and then you begin to fume and fret; you ‘get into a state’, and all to no purpose; whereas you should be telling yourself: Well, I thought God wanted me to catch the train, but He evidently didn’t, and so that’s that; if He wants me here, His will be done. And then you could fill in the time doing something useful instead of pacing up and down the platform like a caged lion and exacerbating your nerves and wasting your time.”

Note especially the suggestion of "training ourselves, and of starting in small ways." If we can identify one or more situations or circumstances that get under our skin - or worse - we have some grist for this mill. We can get to work on identifying, anticipating, and reacting to these in the prayerful way that God desires. Place them in His hands. Allow Him to do with them what He will. We may not immediately or appreciate how He "handles" them at first. But trusting in God doesn't mean all will go smoothly for us.

By now we should know that His ways are not our ways. 

More next time...