A job or a calling?

Categories: spirituality

Tags: SCM

Date: 12 December 2007 18:26:02

"Is your work a job or a calling?" asks a Grandmother of a patient I was looking after yesterday. It threw me slightly - I wasn't expecting it, its not a question I've ever been asked directly before and I wasn't sure if she meant in the religious sense or not. I paused as I considered this question. She answered the question for me with 'well obviously today its a job!' I smiled at this (she'd watched me attempt to multi-task to the limit at points during the day and had made comments such as "and in your sixth pair of hands...") but corrected her. I do believe my work is a calling.

There is a quote in my quote book which a friend sent me: "If God is offering us His liberating rest and peace, why do we insist on a treadmill existence?", Source Unknown. My life at the moment seems incredibly busy - a treadmill existence almost. I always seem to be in work doing 12 hour shifts, and when I am off I'm often travelling around to see friends or doing SCM stuff. Most of what I am doing - work and SCM stuff, I feel is what God wants me to be doing. But consequently I feel that I have less time to pray and read the bible. Whenever I'm not working I try to make it along to my local Methodist church, and I have also been attending an alternative worship community which meets on a Sunday evening. I find the alternative worship an important part of my spiritual needs at the moment - half an hour to just be with Him, concentrating on nothing else, and just having that space to lie on the floor and reflect. I wish I had more time to commit to Him, within my daily routine. It just seems silly that I'm so busy doing stuff that I feel He wants me to do, that I don't have enough time to devote to Him. I could probably make time - would either mean less sleep and/or less 'relaxing online time'. Hmm...