WORK is good for us, even if we
don’t enjoy it. It’s one of the purposes of our lives — to enjoy our work. Work
teaches us wisdom.
I’ve found God teaching me such a
wisdom in the work of sweeping, sucking and blowing leaves. Most times I come
back two days later and the leaves have returned. Sometimes it’s two hours, and
worse when it’s two minutes. (Perth, Western Australia, is one of the windiest
cities in the world.)
Whenever someone tells me that they
would prefer work like mine — blowing and sucking leaves — over their more
nebulous work, because they’d actually see results for their work, they may
well forget how short-lived the results are. Instead of seeing results in my
work, many times God has tested me with the futility of it.
But such work is not futile even if
it seems so. There is wisdom over the horizon beyond futility.
Whenever we do anything in life that
seems futile, we’re simply a step from frustration.
And that’s where purpose is
birthed: on the cusp of something like frustration. In frustration we’re only a
moment from God — or an eternity away.
The ultimate purpose in frustration
is to teach us something: that we have less control over the physics of life
than we’d prefer.
Knowing the leaves are coming back
need not cause frustration, but awareness of our place in life. This physical
life runs according to physical laws.
Frustration is futility. But it is
equally an invitation into acceptance of that cannot be changed.
Such is the wisdom of God nurtured
within; whenever we agree with incontrovertible reality.
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