My good friend who blogs from her southern Minnesota farmstead posted this little story recently. I like the story because it illustrates how easily many of us get distracted from our purpose.
In college, when we start thinking about a career, we focus on professions that offer something we believe is important to the world. People want to be teachers because they believe in the importance of education; people what to become attorneys because they believe in justice; people want to become nurses, doctors and health care specialists because they want to help people. I became a journalist because I wanted to tell stories that I thought the world needed to hear.
After devoting years to these professions, it gets easy to forget why we got into them in the first place. Money inevitably becomes more important. Promotions and advancement become the goal. The professional focus shifts from doing to getting.
And it is easy to understand why. Getting is glamorous. It's exciting to make more money. Nothing feels better than a promotion. Work, on the other hand, can become routine. We in the workplace can become just like those people in the story who forgot about the coffee and got all distracted with the coffee cup.
Even if you are living the GEO Principle, this is an easy trap to fall in to. Even if you understand that the purpose of work is to grow closer to God, it is easy to become distracted with the glitz that accompanies professional advancement.
Certainly, it is nicer to drink coffee out of a ceramic mug than a plastic foam cup, and it is better to get a raise at work than to be passed over for advancement, but if we are lucky enough to benefit from these blessings, let's not forget the source of the blessings. Let's not forget the reason we are at work in the first place. Do your best work everyday and offer it up to God. Don't let glitzy distractions pull you away from your purpose.
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