Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed — and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors — and they have no comforter. Ecclesiastes 4:1
“I love what I do. I rarely have a bad day at the office. My work environment couldn’t be any better suited for my gifts and personality. I love to go to work. And like you, I have more to do than I can ever hope to get done. Every afternoon when I leave the office, there are loose ends: phone calls I didn’t return, meetings I cut short, and people I didn’t get to spend time with who need and deserve my undivided attention.
At the same time, I love my wife and kids. I love to go home. And like you, there’s more to do at home than will ever get done. Never once have my kids looked at me and said, “Hey, Dad, we’ve played enough. Why don’t you run back in the house and see if you can get some work done?” Never once has [my wife] complained about me coming home too early or doing too many things to help her around the house…
So let me take some pressure off. Your problem is not discipline. Your problem is not organization. Your problem is not that you have yet to stumble onto the perfect schedule. And your problem is not that the folks at home demand too much of your time. The problem is this: there’s not enough time to get everything done that you’re convinced — or others have convinced you — needs to get done.
As a result, someone or something isn’t going to get what he wants from you…what she needs from you…what he deserves from you…certainly not what she expects from you. There’s no way around it. There’s just not enough time in your day to be all things to all people.”
Andy Stanley in When Work and Family Collide: Keeping Your Job from Cheating Your Family (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2011) 12-14.
For many people, work feels oppressive when there seems like more work to be done than there are hours in a day. As a result, marriages and families can get squeezed out. When this occurs, the last thing on any worker’s mind is being generous. There’s no margin for giving to others.
Does it have to be this way? Stanley suggests that workers pause to acknowledge that we will never get all our work done and learn to live with margin so we can appropriately give to our spouse, our children, and others. Work will only consume each of us if we let it.
There’s always work to be done and never enough time to do it. If you want to be generous, you must learn to stop working so you can deploy your attention and your resources to other things that may be more important than your work.
I’d appreciate your prayers as I speak on faith and work at the men’s retreat this weekend at Camp Spofford in New Hampshire and share ideas like these. Thank you.