God Works in Your Daily Grind

When we were kids, we all wanted to make a big difference in the world: cure cancer, fly to the moon, or drive that shiny red truck to put out fires in burning buildings. But as we get older, our scope of action is increasingly limited. Each choice we make in our careers seems to foreclose other options. Until finally, we realize that what we’re now doing is what we’ll be doing for a long, long time. We begin to feel a bit claustrophobic. We keep praying, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." But we wonder if we still have a part to play in the ongoing drama of God's redemption of this world.

At times like these, it's good to look into our Family Album—the Old Testament—to remind ourselves how God works. The pivotal event in the Old Testament is the Exodus, when God freed his people from slavery in Egypt. C. B. DeMille and Dreamworks have shown us the drama of the Exodus.

But long before the spectacle of the miraculous plagues, there was the daily, faithful work of two women, Shiphrah and Puah. These women were the head midwives among the Israelites. Day after day, they used their obstetric knowledge to ensure that women could deliver their babies safely. Then one day, Pharaoh became terrified about the growing population of non-Egyptians in the midst of Egypt. He told these midwife supervisors to make sure no male babies were allowed to live.

These women—like any of us at work who face severe ethical challenges—heard no voices from God telling them exactly what to do next. They had no promise from God that they wouldn't lose their jobs, or their lives, if they did the right thing. Nevertheless, they decided to defy the combined governmental and religious leadership of the land in humble obedience to their Lord.

Their defiance would not have looked dramatic to anyone who saw them going to work each day. They simply kept doing what God had called them to do in their professions. They had delivered babies yesterday, and they were delivering babies today. Yet their unswerving perseverance and faithfulness in their daily work changed the course of history.

Just think of the bravery of the police and firefighters who ran toward the burning buildings on 9/11 and ensured that thousands were spared from death. When the world tried to call them heroes, they responded, "We were only doing our jobs."

Ponder for a moment that it was a person trained as an accountant, Sherron Watkins, who brought the Enron scandal to light just by doing her job. She never sought to be a whistle blower, but she knew that accounting is always done in service to the Truth. To shade the truth is to betray one's calling.

Think about President Robert Fisher of Belmont University. Amidst thousands of budget decisions, he asked a simple question, "Do any of our full-time employees earn so little that they live below the poverty line?" It turned out that groundskeepers, janitors and others were earning that little. He immediately gave salary increases to lift these employees above the poverty line. Now, they can adequately feed their families and get medical care for their children.

History would look much more like God intended if we would humbly persevere in our jobs. Love God, and love your neighbors—regardless of the outside pressures or temptations to do something other than what our God-given jobs call us to do.

God is not looking for midwives or accountants or any of us to dream up something dramatic to do for our Lord. We have been called by God to simple, faithful integrity in our daily work.