How to end our Monday morning frustration as we begin a new work week. Joy returns to our life.
It’s Monday morning or may be Tuesday morning when you may be reading this…and some of us are off to work or are we?
Some of us are retired…and or would like to be!
Are you a “Boomer”?
Someone once said that if we are doing what we are passionate about…it’s not work!
Passion
And maybe more important: what is our passion?
Not talking about Golf, Fishing, Hunting, Hiking, Canoeing, Bird watching, or volunteering at our favorite charity… or anything else in our lives that gives us pleasure. We need that. We need “Margin”
Bill and Kathy Peel in their book, Discover Your Destiny, describe “passion” as “simply a strong feeling or deep longing for something. When our passions or longings attach themselves to sinful objects, the Bible often call them lusts or evil desires. However, passions and deep longings can also attach themselves to ideas and actions that are good. Consider King David’s passion for the presence of God: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. (Psalm 42:1)
We are called to God first and then to our secondary calling…which may be our job, business or what we do in “retirement”
Makes me think of a time right after I resigned from my job to devote more time to what seemed more fulfilling…at the time…to my volunteering with Chapin Living Waters, a Christian non profit helping people around the world grow food. I maintained their website. and helped at several food conferences as a volunteer. Very fulfilling!
That sort of led to my volunteering with ECHO putting on a workshop at their annual agricultural conference in Florida using Linkedin to help attendees from around the world to connect with like minded people. A group of very passion people. That to me was passion! Their bio of me stated that I was “refired”, NOT retired!
Some of us may be “Refired” That’s more about Passion at a higher level!
An insight: When our “volunteering passion” is greater than our “work passion”, it can be called “refiring”! AND that is a “defining moment” in our lives.
Reminds me of my key verse from scripture for the past year:
Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will direct your paths. (New International Version)
This has certainly proven true for me as I experienced new challenges, opportunities and direction in my live over the years.
Calling
Then there is “calling”
A word from The Call by Os Guinness. “Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to his summons and service” P. 29
John Henry states in his article A Conversation on Calling in the book His Kingdom Come.
We are called to a vocation. Vocation is our unique call of purpose, the call to serve beyond our daily tasks. Vocation is more than discipleship. Vocation is deeper and wider than career. Vocation is our very personal response to the voice of God. Vocation is our lifework, our special gift of worship, which is the sum of all our gifts, talents, and abilities to serve God’s purpose in our generation (1 Cor.. 3:13-15; 2 Tim. 2:5, 4:8)
Can we have this type of “Passion” in our daily work?
Just something to think and pray about. The result can be a “defining Moment” in our life! More about that in another “Article”
Are we finding joy and peace in our everyday work?
Is this talk about finding peace confusing?
Passion and Calling begins with God…working with Him in our daily lives. We can be co-creators with God. Another “Article” in the future.
AND that can also be part of our worship of God. We can worship God every day.
In Conclusion, Can we do our work as “Worship”?
Some people find their passion and life work as a result of Volunteering!
For further reflection:
In the great orchestra we call life…
“There are things only you can do,
and you are alive to do them.
In the great Orchestra we call life,
you have an instrument and a song,
and you owe it to God to play them both sublimely.”
Max Lucado: Quote is from his book, The Applause Of Heaven.
Play on
“For we are God’s workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Ephesians 2:10 NIV
Why I Get up in the morning.
If we can, then we are truly blessed!
Your thoughts please.
