How to Be Christians when We Hate Our Job

By Anthony S. Zimmer

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Maybe that job is a sacrament by which we are becoming Christian. Maybe it is saving us.
 
We dreamt of achieving a vocation – and we worked hard for it! I remember the diligence, the faithfulness. But we live east of Eden. We strove to flourish, to “bloom where you are planted”, but the ground was cursed, and our souls withered on the vine, replaced by thorns and thistles. Those failures – the pain, the anger, the frustration, the despair – exposed our hearts to ourselves.
 
And what is sanctification but first the revealing of our hearts? And what is sanctification but second the giving and receiving of grace? Maybe that job, like baptism, is a plunge into dying and a grace unto living.
 
Can our half-saved hearts trust us with the jobs we want? Might it not root our hearts deeper into the soil of a corrupted kingdom? Might not Money/Pride/Power, its accumulation and storage, accumulate and store us? Might we become too sated by this fallen kingdom and forget how to criticize it, forget how to mourn?
 
We forget that our first vocation, our first divine calling, is to pick up our cross and follow Christ.
 
Do and be. Leave 
will do and will be
to the vagaries 
of humanity 
and the constancy of grace.

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Anthony S. Zimmer has served in a variety of pastoral roles in America and South Africa. Bi-vocational, he lives and works at the nexus of business, missions, local ministry and theology. He holds a bachelor’s in Bible and Theology, an MBA, and is working towards an MA in Biblical Interpretation.

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