Prayer as Perspective for Our Work

Prayer prepares us for our daily work by giving us perspective. Daily labor has a way of engaging the mind and spirit so thoroughly that we can become obsessed with our tasks. The results can be detrimental to our person as well as to our work. For instance, our work suffers from the “law of diminishing returns” because details overwhelm us. Also, our sense of personal worth suffers because our worth is too closely tied to our work.

In his book Modern Madness: The Emotional Fallout of Success, Douglas LaBier notes an increasing tendency for people to bind together their personal identity with their professional career. “Indeed,” he writes, “they are almost equivalent.” ^[i] But people who identify too closely with their work lose their objectivity and see every problem on the job as either a threat or an enhancement of their self-image. In severe cases, the ensuing stress may lead to psychological anxiety, physical illness, or social conflicts.

In a Psychology Today article entitled, “Is Your Job Driving You Crazy?” Ronni Sandroff lists some of the risks of identifying too closely with our jobs and taking ourselves too seriously.^[ii] In one way or another, every one of us can find ourselves on the list.

Clergy: Supreme Self-Denial – developing a distorted view of self-sacrifice which causes us to ignore our own needs and fail with others.

Police Officer: Rambo Complex – being unable to admit fears and vulnerabilities.

Teachers: Submissive Savant – exaggerating their own powerlessness and fear of confronting authority.

Lawyers: Verdict Vertigo – crumbling under the weight of responsibility and fear of making a mistake.

Dentists: Psychic Cavities – focusing upon technical skills, but having trouble with people, particularly their own families.

Government Workers: Uncle Sam Syndrome – developing lethargic, automaton behavior.

Computer Programmers: Techno-Personality – finding human beings frustrating because they’re too hard too fix.

Performers: Hamlet’s Doubt – after gaining public acclaim, they still have the empty feeling, “Is this all?”

Politicians: Image Attachment – believing their own propaganda and the images they project to the public.

Physicians: M. D.-eity Syndrome – failing in battle against pain, disease and death, their idealism suffers.

Therapists: Pernicious Ph.D.-eity – running the risk of becoming grandiose as they have trouble dropping their interpretative and restrained professional role.

Air Traffic Controllers: Quick Fixers – expressing discomfort with the ambiguities of human situations.

Stock Brokers: Money Mania – falling into the habit of spending money as the way of expressing themselves.

Each of us can add to the list. When we lose the “white space” between our identity and our work, we become miserable and boring persons whom others want to avoid. When we take ourselves too seriously and lose our identity in our work, we have no room to change, stretch, grow, or flex, either on the job or as persons.

“Brooding time” in prayer keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously. When we pray, we step back from our daily work and into the setting where we are all alone with God – very small in His presence, but very significant as eternal and total beings in comparison with the temporary and partial nature of our jobs. At one and the same time, we see our work as infinitely meaningful and patently absurd. To realize that we are cocreators with God gives our daily work infinite meaning; to realize how small a difference our work will make in the history of the world lets us laugh at ourselves. Senator Sam Ervin, Chairman of the Senate Committee investigating the Watergate scandal, was asked if he was ready for such a crucial and controversial role. Ervin answered, “I’ve been preparing all of my life for this moment.” With humility and humor, then, he brought an objectivity to his chairmanship that kept him from grandstanding and left everyone with the impression that he was wise and fair with all parties. As we know, Sam Ervin was a man who knew the value of “brooding time” in prayer.

Each day, then, we need to prepare for work with prayer. Such a discipline is not only spiritually sound, but is also mentally necessary. Experts in time management recommend daily “brooding” as preparation for effective work A simple technique of listing tasks to be done and then sorting them out according to their priorities: urgent and essential, timely and important, and long-range and optional, restores perspective to our work and multiplies our efficiency. Even when our work plan is upset by interruptions, we retain our perspective. Henri Nouwen, the professor-priest, tells of resenting students who interrupted his scholarly writing until one day he realized that the students were the reason for his calling to teaching. From that perspective he said, “Interruptions are my business.” ^[iii]

In one way or another, each of us needs to set a schedule of “brooding time” in preparation for our daily work. My pattern involves solitary time both morning and night. Late every night, I jog along the nearly abandoned streets in our village. I am so regular on the run that students of the seminary have nicknamed me “The Midnight Strider.” They know that I want to be alone; I need the time to regain my perspective. No Walkman fills my ears with the sound of music or teaching tapes. The built-in recorder of my brain frees my mind from the clutter of the day and prepares me for the work load of tomorrow. The first ten minutes or so is “sorting time.” I store extraneous events of the day in the memory bank of “Things to Forget,” including failures, criticisms, and hurts which are not worth either a response or a continuing memory. One of the most significant phrases that I recall speaking to myself after weighing a personal grievance is, “It’s not worth my time or energy. I have more important things to do.”

Eighteen to twenty minutes into my jogging I experience the “runner’s high.” Whether it is physiological or psychological, it translates into a spiritual experience for me. After reaching that high, I have not only put my daily work back into the perspective of my spiritual calling, but have had unforgettable moments of “creative breakthroughs” with solutions to problems, outlines for speeches, and imaginative thoughts for long-range planning. Most important of all, at least for me, my anxiety about the future is lifted and I return home to sleep with the “sweet amen of peace.”

In those memorable moments, I feel a kinship with the Spirit of God who “brooded” over the dark waters and empty earth before proceeding with His creative work. Chaos, darkness and emptiness characterize my world as well. Without “brooding time” and prayer with God alone, the world is too much for me. But if I step back and gain the perspective of prayer, I see the creative potential in my work for order to come from chaos, light from darkness, and fullness from emptiness.

^[i] Douglas LaBier, Modern Madness: The Emotional Fallout of Success (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Inc., 1986), 26.
^[ii] Ronni Sandroff, “Is Your Job Driving You Crazy?” Psychology Today (July/August 1989), 42-44.
^[iii] Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1986), 52.