Your Place in This World

I remember I had a job for a while as a teenager, folding and unfolding chairs for church. It wasn’t done with a lot of happiness. In fact, I resented it. It wasn’t for pay. My mother had offered my services and the tedious labor was joyless.

That is until I had a sage older man pull me aside, and he patiently told me that what I was doing was allowing people a chance to hear God. “You are doing a good thing here. You are helping people change their lives.”

Suddenly, I had a better understanding.

Sometimes, we need to understand how we fit into the big picture. If you are faithfully working on a project , a good boss will tell you how your labor helps the mission. None of us wants to labor for nothing. None of us wants to waste our time.

We all need to understand our purpose. If we don’t have one, despair  frustration and disappointment can easily set in.

We need to connect the dots with our labor to a reason. 

GE recently produced a series of videos, featuring their own employees, that connect the worker to the work to the vision of the company. In one video, at the GE Aviation Plant in Durham, NC, employees, one after another, repeat the core mission with eagerness, “we build jet engines.”

They talk about why they love their jobs. “To design and create the next great thing takes a lot of courage,” said one employee. “You wrap it up and send out the door, and you know that somewhere out there this machine you made is serving an even bigger purpose,” gushed another.

GE sent these plant employees to Boeing Field in Seattle, to watch the fruits of their labor lift off in a jet’s first flight. The video romanticizes building engines, and the cynic might want to see a companion video of all the employees who don’t like their job. But to see these people, loving what they are doing, makes me want to fly.

To watch the video, click here.