the discipline (and joy) of Work

My job is hard sometimes.  Today my day was filled with....

• "please STAY IN BED! DON'T GET UP WITHOUT US!"
• "keep your IV in please... wait... please, no...don't pull it out...agh!" (5th IV out in 24 hours)
• "please do not call the cops again - we are not keeping you against your will. we're trying to keep you safe. "
• "I'm gonna try to get you on this bedside commode as fast as I can.. please wait" (patient pees on floor/my shoes/my hands)
• "please don't put your hands in your diaper. please don't touch the curtains, there is some poop on your hand" (patient grabs onto the curtain with both hands filled with poop)
• "please don't raise your voice at me. Please, sir, I'm trying to help you" (as he proceeds to call me every bad word that starts with S, SH, F and B")
• "sir, stop kicking me please. keep your legs inside the bed. we really need to keep your hands to yourself, my friend"

On a day to day basis - I get smacked, kicked, spit on, cussed at and threatened. We pour our hearts out. We sacrifice ourselves. We invest our time, energy, strength and love into these lives and desire so much to do all things excellently. But many times, the work we do does not bear visible fruit. There are some days when I feel that no matter how hard I try and no matter how much I invest into people - it is simply not enough. In a job like this, it's quite easy to become burnt out!

What hope we have knowing that God always provides us with the strength to do the work entrusted to us! I'm learning that my strength, my patience and my compassion for people are limited in and of itself. I am so limited. My love is so small. My patience so short! Even when I have the best intentions, it is simply not enough for me to want to do a good job. To do the work that we do every day and to do it excellently is entirely dependent on our reliance on God for strength. It's not the task in and of itself, but from Whom this task and calling was received that I can find the ability to do any job well. It is only when I remember that God is purposeful in all things - and that every patient/work/task he puts under my care is His perfect and sovereign will -  that I can find the greatest joy in doing the work that I do... no matter how challenging, frustrating and trying it can be.

A much-needed reminder for today.

There is no such thing as "Christian work". 

That is, there is no work in the world which is, in and of itself, Christian. Christian work is any kind of work, from cleaning a sewer to preaching a sermon, that is done by a Christian and offered to God. 

This means that nobody is excluded from serving God. 

It means there is no job in the world that needs to be boring or useless. A Christian finds fulfillment not in the particular kind of work he does, but in the way in which he does it.  

The nature of the work changes when we see that it is God who marks out this line of duty for us. It is service to Him. 

Work is a blessing.  

God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.  

The Christian has all these in Christ: work, a Master, a hope. Yet how easily we forget this. Let us lift up our work as we lift up our hands, our hearts, our bodies- a sacrifice acceptable because it is lifted up to Him who alone can purify.

Elisabeth Elliot - "Disciplines, the Glad Surrender."

Tomorrow is a new day :)