worry wart

Well, I'm back to worrying again. :) I'm still as sleepy as ever but I'm promising myself to kick my own butt soon . . . starting tomorrow? Next week?? Tomorrow, preferably, but no later than next week.

As I was falling asleep last night, I thought about how my focus on wanting to work out my faith in my work (?) might be misplaced. That is, most Christians want to be Christians in their workplace. Fundamentally, there must be a difference between a Christian teacher and a non-Christian teacher. Almost everyone agrees that Christian teachers should demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit in their workplace: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I can think of many non-Christians who exhibit similar qualities but there's no reason why those of us who are Christians should continue to uphold these ideals in our own lives!

Many of us in secular professions--myself included--wonder how our beliefs will then shape the nature or subject of our work. For my part, perhaps I've been too literal in my interpretations of what that would mean. My thoughts on what my work might look like in a nonliteral sense are still too inchoate to share at this point.

But last night, I did wonder if the relation between work and faith might even take a turn on a much different tack. Rather than working out our faith in our workplace, might it be more fruitful to think of our work as uncovering our faith, as a part of God's designs? The former is good but I'm wondering now if the latter is equally as important. In other words, rather than worrying about writing on a subject matter that is explicitly Christian, my duty now is to do my job as best as I can and trust that in the process of doing so, it would continue to be a spiritual act of sorts. My thoughts are too rudimentary for me to pretend that this might be relevant to others in other vocations but it might be worth thinking through in my own circumstances.