A friend of mine shared this article by John Piper a few weeks ago and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Throughout the past several weeks I’ve felt the pendulum swing back and forth – from feeling like I’m exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing to then feeling discouraged, as if all the hard work we do each day is for nothing.
It’s easy to get so bogged down by other people’s opinions and the things we feel like we’re supposed to be doing to fit in or be successful.
After a particularly frustrating bout of discouragement the other week, I grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote a quote from Piper’s article to post over my computer – “The Lord measures the faithfulness of our labor, not our success.” (Go read Piper’s article, especially if that quote doesn’t make much sense to you.)
It doesn’t matter to God how many clients we have lined up for next year. It doesn’t matter how many Instagram or Pinterest followers we have. It doesn’t matter if we respond to emails in two minutes or two hours or two days if we must. God’s not keeping tabs on these things and labeling us as “successful” human beings if we meet a certain standard.
Instead, he “measures the faithfulness of our labor.” Are you doing what you do with care and creativity and a willing heart, whether you receive recognition or not? Or are you begrudgingly taking the next step, wishing you could just “be there already” – wishing “success” would just be handed to you? More often than not, I find myself in the latter category. I start complaining and whining that nobody else “gets it” – that they don’t see the hours of work we pour into the things we love (I’m writing this post at 1 in the morning, if you’d really like to know.) But when I get anxious and concerned about what people think, I lose sight of the goal. I lose sight of the Lord.
What if each day, instead of immediately opening my inbox to see what clients I need to answer to, I instead take a deep breath and say – Lord, what would you have me do today? How can these seemingly meaningless, mindless tasks of editing photos, answering emails, sorting receipts, and uploading files bring you glory? How can these things change from meaningless and mindless to meaningful and life-giving, both to me and to the clients we serve?
I ask this question over and over. I’m one of those people who believes at the depth of my soul that the lives we live should be meaningful. We shouldn’t while away our days wishing for something better. It’s hard. And most days I do it very poorly. But one day, one hour, one minute at a time I want to aim to be more mindful. I want to consider not “how can I be more successful?” but “how can I be more faithful in my labor?” How can I be more present with my friends, my family, our clients, with Tim? How can I use this place, this time, and the gifts that I have to honor and glorify and point back to the Lord, through each of my hesitant, faltering steps.
Photos are from our trip to visit friends in Arizona this summer – I’ll be blogging more of those here soon. That is, once I surface from the piles and piles of editing currently on my plate 😉