FAITH OF MONDAY: Daily Work Life

Dear Community!

I say "faith of Monday" because Christianity is not a suit for Sunday use, but rather, in daily work life it is necessary to practice what we profess.

Our task is to live the faith in daily work, not just on a Sunday morning... When looking for a biblical statement about daily work life, I did not find what I was looking for at first sight. The instructions to live are always addressed in the New Testament letters to the community, at most to the family or the "farm" of family businesses. The Bible also provides information about daily life.

Romans 12: 9-16

Love should not be hypocritical. Despise evil, do good with all your strength! Love yourself as brothers and honor each other courteously. Do not neglect yourself with zeal, but let the spirit of God inflame you. It serves Christ in all things, the Lord. Rejoice as people of hope, remain steadfast in anguish, do not abstain in prayer. Provide everyone in the community who is experiencing difficulties and compete in hospitality. Desire those who persecute you. Bless them instead of cursing them. Rejoice with the happy and cry with the sad. Everyone should be united. Do not look for the high, but keep the communion with the despised. Do not trust your own wisdom.

When we talk about daily work life, everyday life focuses on students and apprentices, workers and pensioners, managers and freelancers, family directors, volunteers and employees. Every day is the moment in which we do something that is not always our passion, that it costs us strength, but also makes us happy, that helps us to survive and helps us to bless others.

In daily life, we fulfill God's mission to govern the earth by cultivating and preserving it (Genesis 1-2).

The life coach that the Apostle Paul gives us here is valid for every day of the week.

Love is genuine, not intended

Smile hypocritical, sure, how we smiled in the workplace, in the meeting, when the colleague or classmate was completely out of place? Feigned? Or are we filled with hearts, do we pray that God will give us a clue as to when we can talk to his colleague about his behavior?

Love also includes criticism and reservations. She does not go directly on everything. But she has the welfare of the other in sight, not her destruction. Therefore, real love is also shown in conversations about the non-present.

Are we the ones who end the gossip and the bad rumors? Or do we join, because it does so well? Do I care about my colleagues and want them to experience the love of God through me? Or am I just a big tree, standing between the light of God and my colleagues and needing all the love of God himself?
It may be helpful to raise your eyes to heaven on Monday morning and pray: "Lord, give me love for the people I work with today, even for those who do not lie to me.

Build something and thus serve Christ

Building something, building that world and helping it develop in the will of God is a great job. We often separate. The spiritual and helping professions promote the kingdom of God, the so-called secular professions lack interest for the kingdom of God. But that look is very short. Especially in the normal professions, in technology, in the factory, in the garbage disposal or in the workshop, we can serve Jesus Christ by providing our work responsibly, building his world with him.

Behavior in everyday life: happy, hopeful, firm and praying

If our attitude is happy and hopeful, we have charisma from within. Here the positive experience of the community and the safe network of prayers that it brings us help us. We can approach everyday life with the certainty that God is there and helps us.

Being firm seems to contradict Christianity for our fellow men. One thinks, Christians always give for love. But you need firmness, especially in critical situations. Do we defend our faith, even if others shake their heads? Do we stand by the colleague who is being bullied? Do we stick with the boss, who is under great pressure? Are we preventing men of power from choosing others and ironing over them? And do we accept not to be loved by that?

Prayer is the accompaniment music of everyday life. If some stores and practices listen to the radio from morning to night, then the presence of God should always be in the foreground with us. We hear it, we can think about it, we do not even need a telephone or Facebook like the radio listeners who tune into the program.