The Grind Alasdair gets to the train each morning around 6:10. He is in his office with a fresh coffee by 7. The workday is a roller coaster ride with no time to think, eat, or use the restroom. He drags himself back to the train and around 7PM and is home playing catch-up with family by 8. This grueling schedule is the norm for those who work in finance (farmers, doctors, and some service industry friends work a similar... Read more
Work Through the Divine Lens: 3 Reasons I am building a bridge, a bridge that crosses what I call the vocational divide–the disconnect between faith and work. This gap results in a huge vacuum of meaning in the daily experience of work for most of us. And so I launched a New Year with 10 reasons why our work matters to God. Here are 3 reasons behind the series: Most of us aren’t sure how our work matters to God... Read more
Today we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King. In his famous “I have a dream speech” he says the following: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The workplace is a place where this dream can come true. Work as True Meritocracy A healthy workplace is characterized by two factors: A... Read more
Confessions of a Verse Hijacker Most of my career has been as a pastor. Recently, as I was prepping for a short talk for a group of businessmen, I realized I had hijacked a statement from one of Paul’s letters, narrowly defining the work portion of the comments for churchly ends. Here’s the quote: For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10) When I... Read more
The Question of Purpose Does God care about the work we do each day? Does our work serve any purpose of his? Does it matter to him? This kickoff series of 2016 answers these questions with a resounding YES! The principles in this series (and on Marketplace Faith) rest on a chain of assumptions: There is a God. His personality, values, and standards are knowable. The Bible is an accurate guide to this God. Jesus is the supreme revelation of this... Read more
In the investment business, we talk about the time horizon of a given instrument or security—the point in the future at which the investment is meant to pay off. In project management, we have the planning horizon. Essentially it’s the same idea—the end date for when the plan will be completed or at least evaluated. One of the confounding yet liberating concepts about our work, is that God’s time horizon stretches beyond the boundaries of time. The Ultimate Reward Consider... Read more
Questions About Glory I suspect most of us would agree on the following 2 statements about glory: Some things (like the Grand Canyon or a perfect sunrise or a stirring song) truly are glorious and should be celebrated as such. Needing glory—being the center of attention, histrionic, a glory hound—not a healthy character trait. These two different takes on glory set us up for some thinking about the glory of God and its connection with our work. Is God... Read more
Somewhere along the way, the reputation of work was tainted. The idea took hold in our collective consciousness that work was a necessary evil rather than a social and personal good. Incomplete Christian thought has contributed to this neglect. Writing Work Out of the Story The story goes something like this: Part 1: God creates a good world. People lived in the Garden of Eden and didn’t have to work. Part 2: People fell from grace, they spoiled the... Read more
The Myth of Easy I’ve been working since I was 14. Something has been staring me in the face that I’ve only recognized in the last five years as I’ve had the opportunity to go to work on work: Work is hard! I’ve heard old-timers say “of course work is hard, that’s why they call it work.” Yet I’ve grown up in a different era, an era where the tacit assumption is that if you’re doing work (or parenting or marriage or... Read more
We don’t derive our purpose from our work, we bring our purpose TO our work. This brilliant statement, shared by a colleague whose name escapes me, points up one of the great challenges of life at work. It is difficult to sense the larger point or purpose of our work. The church and religious voices are largely silent on the point of work outside the walls of the local congregation. The wider culture only agrees on the most basic assumption: work... Read more
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