Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Speaking

Speaking

To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God’s will in my work.  In this way I become [God’s] instrument….Unnatural, frantic, anxious work, work done under pressure of greed or fear or any other inordinate passion, cannot properly speaking be dedicated to God, because God never wills such work directly.” ~Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation.

         “What is it that you do?”  A question I get often.  Usually before I can answer they’ll continue with, “You like, preach, right?  Is that it?”  I’ll then respond by affirming the task of preaching as part of my job but also how being a pastor is more than just being a preacher.  I am a pray-er, a writer, a teacher, and a learner.  Of course the list could go on.  But what I like to hold up for those who ask this question is that, whether we are a preacher or a teacher, a pharmacist or a retiree, all of that which we do with our hands is sacred, it is a form of practicing our spirituality.

         Essentially, a spirituality of work draws us out of ourselves and, at the same time, makes us more of what we are meant to be.  My work develops myself.  I become what I practice in life.  When we embrace our work as truly a sacred call, we will begin to see that we, with God’s help, become creators of a new universe.  We are co-creators in God’s reign.

So, what is it that you do? 

Do you do it slowly or frantically? 

Remember, what you do, matters.  

Practice it, sacramentally.  

It’ll come more naturally.