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Good morning. This week, I have been helping a colleague settle into his new role as part of our office team. He has been bombarded with information about the systems he will need to learn, the names and faces he will be expected to remember and the expectations which await him in his first few months on the job.
Early in the week, we spent time looking at diagrams of the organisation, drawing lines between boxes and sketching things out on a white board on the wall. But it was clear that after a bit of this, both for him and me, the benefits weren’t matching the effort. So as the week went on we went out to meet people – volunteers who give of their spare time to run projects in the community, or drop in centres for international visitors to our city. Healthcare specialists who provide pastoral support for patients in hospital, and their families. Chaplains who work in prisons, or the armed forces, or with newly arrived students in our universities and colleges. Suddenly the lines and boxes on the page come to life in the stories of real people, doing real good where they are, motivated by the love God has first shown to them, and which they now wish to pass on to others. So when I or my new colleague is drafting a budget or making a presentation, or attending a committee meeting, I hope we never lose sight of why we go to work each morning.
Lord God, if we are going to work today, wherever it is, may this be a day when you surprise us, by turning an everyday encounter into an act of thankful worship. Amen.