“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”
Maya Angelou
“Duty makes us do things well…but love helps us do them beautifully.”
Author Unknown
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.”
Henri Nouwen
“Whatever you do work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”
Col 3:23
My Prayer today is for the work of our hands, our minds, and our hearts. What does love have to do with our work? Only everything. Love fuels and enables us. We do things with love, for love, because of love. The old saying, ‘whatever is worth doing is worth doing well’, has both truth and power in it. Its truth, is in the knowledge that our work’s value is found in our contribution to the bigger picture, the integral part that we play, essential to the whole. The power in it, is the conviction that even when we don’t feel like it, when our work feels tiring or unrewarding, that we do it well, not because we want to but because it’s worth doing. Work is good for us, and necessary for a healthy and thriving community and society, and our deepening spirituality, as Henri Nouwen states, should not draw us away the from the world and society, and from taking part in it, but deeper into it, and fulfilling our purpose and God’s will in tangible and practical ways. Love is a response, not just a feeling, but a call to action. Its love that makes things possible, and although we can work without love, we can never love without working – without giving and offering something of ourselves for the benefit of those around us.
These are drawn from daily prayers and reflections I write for my Chaplaincy colleagues.
Living Tree Poetry 