Applying a 2" x 4" to my noggin

'course a 2" x 4" is actually a 1.5" x 3.5" or so, but when you're getting whapped upside the head, who cares about a half-inch here or there?

For awhile now I've had a really nasty attitude towards my job. I frankly hate it. Part of that is due to the last item on the entry directly below this. When everything below your knees is searing with pain, you have a hard time enjoying what you're doing. If eating a Chicago Connection pizza while drinking a Guinness hurt like this, I'd stop immediately. (sooooo glad there's no pain in that!)

Another part is that the quality of our management has taken a horrible nose dive. Personnel (both crew and management) being stretched too thin contributes to this, new managers who shouldn't be at that level--there's one manager who I really like, but too often feel like I and one or two other crew members are really running the place when he's on shift.

Anyway that hatred towards toiling under the Golden Arches has led to a souring of my attitude in general, 'tho I'm usually able to keep it focused on the job, I'm not entirely successful. And honestly, didn't really bother me too much to hate the job.

So last night, I'm leaving for work and sign out of the chatroom. Dr. White stops me, "Hey...just remember....It is the Lord Christ you serve. :-)"

And that kind of takes all the fun out of bitter resentment...with friends like that...But I take the admonition to heart, or try to anyway.

Then this morning doing my blogrun, I hit this post on Reformation21's blog, "The Doctrine of Vocation" (you'll have to scroll to it, the 21 guys have yet to discover the magic of permalinks). Which serves as a nice little reminder of Veith's book God at Work, a nice life-changing read on the doctrine of vocation--most of which I'd been repressing lately. It's almost like someone's trying to tell me something...or pound it through my head, something like that.

So I'm refocusing myself today (and hopefully for many to come) on the Protestant Doctrine of Vocation, so nicely summed up by Veith:

When we pray the Lord's Prayer, observed Luther, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And He does give us our daily bread. He does it by means of the farmer who planted and harvested the grain, the baker who made the flour into bread, the person who prepared our meal. We might today add the truck drivers who hauled the produce, the factory workers in the food processing plant, the warehouse men, the wholesale distributors, the stock boys, the lady at the checkout counter. Also playing their part are the bankers, futures investors, advertisers, lawyers, agricultural scientists, mechanical engineers, and every other player in the nation's economic system. All of these were instrumental in enabling you to eat your morning bread.

Before you ate, you probably gave thanks to God for your food, as is fitting. He is caring for your physical needs, as with every other kind of need you have, preserving your life through His gifts. "He provides food for those who fear him" (Psalm 111:5); also to those who do not fear Him, "to all flesh" (136:25). And He does so by using other human beings. It is still God who is responsible for giving us our daily bread. Though He could give it to us directly, by a miraculous provision, as He once did for the children of Israel when He fed them daily with manna, God has chosen to work through human beings, who, in their different capacities and according to their different talents, serve each other. This is the doctrine of vocation.