Parents, Do You Love Your Work?* Words From COVID 19 quarantine

 Parents, Do you love your work? At a crucial point in my life, God allowed me to recover from a very challenging ministry by serving a church with a really fun loving staff. We worked hard together, but we also played together. We had group sermon development meetings each week and had lunch together regularly. Staff meetings included a lot of laughter and they were surprisingly more productive when they included a good dose of levity along with prayer and hard work. Church wide IMPROV comedy nights hosted by the staff were hilarious with these creative and very funny staff members. Once, we had a staff football game that included some other people to fill out the teams. It began as a fun game of touch football, but as some games go with a group of energetic people, the intensity escalated shortly into the game… still fun but a bit more competitive. For what would be my last play in that game, I was sprinting down the field (first mistake... sprinting with my less than youthful body) determined to catch the long bomb hurled from a young college man from several yards away (second mistake… lack of awareness of a defender sprinting from across the field to defend). I was looking over one shoulder watching for the perfectly thrown ball, accelerating to catch it, when, from out of nowhere, another younger and obviously faster staff member came up unseen behind me. Just as the ball was about to sail above my outstretched hands, I jumped. As I was air born with my amazing 3 inch vertical jump, he made impact as he left his feet and reached up for the ball too. The ball tipped off our hands and we rolled over and over like a Texas tumbleweed blown by a dust devil. I had no idea what had just happened, but he jumped up laughing. Apparently, that kind of uncontrolled fall was something he enjoyed and often hoped would happen again and again. I was having post traumatic flashbacks of a concussive flag football game in college (see earlier post http://williampmcg.blogspot.com/.../parents-when-we...). This time, there was no concussion, just a very sore body… stove up from head to toe, to remind me of the fun I enjoyed with my friends and fellow staff members. I wouldn’t have traded the fun times, refreshment, and laughter we had at that church. The staff connection God allowed us to enjoy was seemingly infectious with the whole congregation during those years. The church was growing and people were glad to be together. Weekdays and Sundays were a joy. We were able to witness God at work in people’s lives in many wonderful ways.

The wisest man to ever live had much to say about work. He says to celebrate when God blesses you with work you love and people you enjoy. Solomon, in his book called “the Preacher,” says, “What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Ecclesiastes 2:22-26 (NIV) Having experienced both sides of these verses, I am so thankful for the years at various churches, finding satisfaction in ministry. There were some years of sleepless nights (some with tears), worrying needlessly about things that I couldn’t change and that really didn’t matter in the long run but felt so crucial at the time. It all seems to come back to the health of our relationship with God and the people around us. When we love God and the people He loves well, work and life usually seem to be more enjoyable and productive.

Hang in there people! God is with us! I’m praying for us all.