Thursday, November 4, 2010

It Might Be Your Career But It’s Only a Job


We are apt to forget the primary for the secondary and tertiary. The expensive solitaire diamond is given higher place to the more practical setting that holds it and allows it to shine.

We are very quick usually in taking things for granted.

Careers are fascinating things, in that they give us a purpose to throw our whole lives into; they’re something we can believe in.

But, occasionally this thing we’ve believed in for years is suddenly found known to be a phony... it could never deliver upon all our needs, not like the love and support of family. And we’re left stranded.

Life is like this. We quickly move on beyond the basic things we should be eternally grateful for; things like life and breath and spouses and children and parents.

How do we forget these things so easily?

The Covetous Nature

It’s because we are so naturally covetous. We have the opportunity to acquire things. We see things, we smell them and we taste them. All this ‘good fruit’ is provided for us by our heavenly Father, and we take it, more and more less gratefully.

Before we know it we’ve been duped by virtue of all these things—possessions and positions in life—and then we lose something genuinely precious; something irreplaceable, and therefore priceless.

In this sense we learn the hard way. Those things we more naturally skirt around, for they’re assumed as ‘givens,’ are the very things that hold us together as functioning human beings in this world of sublime avariciousness.

Party to the Fight for Spiritual Death?

People who are out of work clamour for it because they need to feed their families—they need to live. That is the function of work. Sure, we also grow in our work and we serve our employers and find part of our identities in it, but climbing the corporate ladder against other more noble goals is the sure-fire way to experience spiritual death.

This can just as easily happen to the pastor or minister as they ‘grow’ their congregations and ministries. It’s not simply about numbers. Numbers happen or they don’t. It’s God’s time and purpose we sway for.

What must happen beyond all of this are the right inputs to life. This is suggestive of the right approach and order of things, and the grasping at life and not death. This is considering the eternal always over the temporary.

Our daytime vocations are not the be-all and end-all. Could it be time for an overhaul; to turn upside down what has us out-of-balance... even ever so slightly?

Let’s resolve to never again—as much as that’s achievable—forget the priceless things of life for this more glamorous, but certainly more superficial world.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

4 comments:

  1. Okay? So.... how do you make a change when the only way out/up seems to be get/keep job, use that as a stone to get to where you want to get, but you're spending too much of your time surviving the job to be moving in the direction that gets you to real living and away from the reliance on the job? :)

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  2. I'd just suggest a re-assessment of what's truly important to you, Altaica. Only from this will we know our right path. I cannot tell you or even suggest that for you, but it's my prayer you'll find clarity in your search.

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  3. Very true. And funny thing is *I'm* living my passion (homeschooling), but my husband is not (music). He's a programmer by day, and has come to loathe it.
    But the reality is that kids need to eat, be clothed and in one son's case, needs his med insurance. Lots of other little moths eat at the fabric of our lives, all those other 'needs' that each bit of life brings, car means insurance means registration, and there's no way to easily chuck many of these things. I mean, I'd love to ditch some dependencies, but some of them just aren't workable in the real world. And boy, I'm a dreamer, but some of that gnaws at my soul knowing that you can't eat dreams.

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  4. Sorry for the delay in responding, Altacia. I know that for you and your family the hope of the future you dream of is real. It may take years for it all to come to pass that's all... now for the present blessings to enjoy! Those things we're thankful for right now. I admire your resolve!

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