You don’t have to be in the workplace for too long before challenges come your way. A difficult colleague, a demanding boss, an overwhelming workload.
Hardships steer us to rely on God, and to ask, “What can God do?” instead of “What can I do?”.
Being reminded of God’s presence moves us to turn our spiritual eyes heavenward, and to reflect on His steadfast love and faithfulness in our lives.
So, how can we “better see” God in our everyday lives?
“I should get up and do my laundry.”
“I should get my steps above 6,000.”
“I should unsubscribe from that streaming platform I am no longer using.”
“I should go to bed earlier. I should wake up earlier.”
These are just some of the milder “shoulds” that pass through my head on any given day.
You start off the new year with a plan to follow–to finish the whole Bible in one year. But by the time the third week of January rolls around, you’re three days behind, equivalent to 12 to 15 chapters to catch up on. The doubt about actually doing this creeps in. The guilt of not doing what you said you’d do piles up.
I was born in a non-Christian family that was devoutly following a different religion. When I was about to graduate from high school, questions started to form in my mind: “If I hadn’t been born into this family, would I still have chosen to believe this?”
It was like a scene in a movie. Picture the camera set across the street from a cafe, where two people walk out. They face each other briefly, then each turn back and start walking in the opposite direction.
I remember the day vividly from that perspective, even though I was one of the two people walking away from each other.
I heard them as soon as the lift doors opened. The raucous chatter of teenage girls, occasionally punctuated by the tone-deaf squeals of a rubber chicken toy they had stumbled on in the church’s kindergarten and now took delight in playing with.
Believing that it’s usually the guy who’s expected to make the first move, I was afraid that people would be laughing behind my back and making negative comments about me. Truth was, I felt ashamed about having been “rejected romantically”.
There was a challenging season of my life when I felt like everything was not going well. I was led on by someone whom I thought was a potential life partner, and the cultural pressures to get married made me anxious. On top of that, my PhD proposals had been rejected multiple times.