Issue 060
Do you ever find yourself feeling that your work is relentless? You see tasks stretching out in front of you to an invisible horizon, or have the sense that you are walking in a long tunnel with no light at its end. Deadlines just keep coming, change is continuous and new targets get added to your already results-driven schedule. Day upon day, week upon week, month upon month, for years and years work just keeps coming with a never-ending stream of demands and even though there are times when you love your work, it just seems overwhelming.
Occasionally you attend a conference where ‘work’ is addressed or perhaps your church ‘does’ work in a sermon or sermon series; then things move on to the next subject. But you can’t do work on a one-off basis – it goes on and on; you can’t move on to the next issue because you have to go back to work.
Of course, for some, external pressure connects with internal desires, fears or ambitions to create the workaholic, driven style which delivers high achievement at high personal cost. Nevertheless, whatever the reasons, the challenge, demands and pressures are never-ending.
“Listen to me,”, says God to his people, over two and a half thousand years ago, “you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you, I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you’.
This sounds like a life-long commitment, to me. Try reading it whenever you feel overwhelmed. Add it to Jesus’ promise to be with you always and David’s comment on the Lord’s goodness, being with him all the days of his life, and you will begin to realise that there is someone who is with you today and every day, has been with you since you were conceived, will be with you into your grey-haired retirement, will walk with you through the valley of death and welcome you to enter His place for a long, long rest!
In the middle of our relentless workload, there is relentless Support;it’s all overwhelming.
Isaiah 46:3-4
3 “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. 4 Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
Psalm 23:6
6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
Matthew 28:20
20 And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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