Issue 317
You may have noticed that it’s hard to do for yourself what you can do for others: Doctors find it difficult to self-diagnose, chef’s sometimes can’t serve themselves a good meal, hairdressers struggle to style their own hair and a saying about the vet’s dog (the caricature of the unhealthy pet of a veteran surgeon) further illustrates the point.
In our quest to solve the puzzle of love and work we are assembling pieces; one of them concerns Jesus’ strategy to add Father to everything; the second concerns learning to receive energy before giving it out. This naturally begs the question as to how to receive God’s energising love in order to do everyday work. I have hinted that receiving involves a certain kind of learning to be still. There is a kind of stillness related to setting aside extended time, going apart from any distraction and concentrating exclusively on God. For many this is simply not possible in most weeks of the year due to time pressures, and for all it is not possible every day of the week. I suggest to you that we need to learn to practise a kind of still receiving, which takes place while we are working and not exclusively outside of working hours.
….which brings me back to my opening thought – is it possible to benefit from your own work? I suggest that it most definitely is on two profound levels:
Firstly, on a personal level, each one of you is able to approach life and work in a unique manner related to your design. At WORKTALK we call this ‘Core Process’. Core Process recognises that the way you do anything is the way you do everything, and that is due to God’s breath in your soul. So on a personal level, part of solving the puzzle is to learn to bless yourself in the same way that God has designed you to bless others. By asking yourself how you empower others, you reveal the challenge to give that same empowerment to yourself (remember the second part of the second commandment is about loving yourself).
But there is another more general principle which, if you can grasp it, will utterly revolutionise your working week; it is played out in the narrative of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at a town called Sychar at a spot called Jacob’s Well. Jesus’ team had gone into the town for food supplies, and Jesus was exhausted from the journey south to north of the country. The record of the encounter is in the fourth chapter of John’s gospel and contains rich insight into Jesus’ exploding of racial, gender, religious, social and historical prejudices. The interview crosses the boundary of seven hundred years of bigotry and results in an extremely damaged woman receiving satisfaction, meaning and purpose for the first time in her life.
When his team returns with supplies, they want him to eat. Jesus explains that he has food that they know nothing about; he seems to be nourished, revived and full up. Naturally his team suppose he’s had a meal while they’ve been to the Sychar supermarket. Jesus’ explanation gives us the piece of the puzzle: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work”.
There is the dynamic: Jesus’, in discharging his calling, feeds his own soul. He hasn’t gone away or stopped; it is while doing his work that he has found nourishment; in fact, it is doing his work that revives him.
This is too good to rush. We will get indigestion if we do. Next time we will open this feast up and slowly feed on its ingredients. For now, you can add “bless yourself as you bless others” and “feed as you work (on your work)”, to your puzzle pieces.
Eat well.
John 4:34-38
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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