“If I am going to do something meaningful with my life, what kind of work should I do?”

In a world with an abundance of choices and options, that I think is a subconscious question at the back of our minds. It flows out of understanding who I am called to be and how I am called to relate to others (for more on that see The Question of Identity and Who Matters to Me? ).

When we wake up in the morning there are jobs to do and errands to run. We have responsibilities, but what am I called to do that only I can do? This lack of clarity is especially true in the day-to-day routine of life with the myriad of choices at our disposal.

Dawson Trotman expresses this in the following challenge, “Never do anything that someone else can and will do, when there is so much of importance to be done which others cannot or will not do.”
There are plenty of good and even noble things that we could do. How do we decide which ones to make our responsibility, guided by the wisdom that ‘the good is the enemy of the best’? The key is finding and walking in whatever is our God given calling. It is important to grasp that this is not a simple one-off process. It will involve experimentation and failure to such an extent that failure is another part of the process.

Parker Palmer addresses this with his question, “Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?”

We tell ourselves this is a path we want to take, but how many of our choices and decisions come from our ego or a desire to impress others? There is also a calling within us that we also need to recognise and respond to.

The New Testament asserts that God has prepared good work for us to do that is unique to us. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (2:10) as he celebrates the goodness of God to us through Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf proclaims, “For we are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

The word for handiwork is the same word from which we get the word poem. It is a work of art with God being the master craftsman.

Do join my co-host Elliott Frisby and I as we unpack this further in the 25 minute conversation below. We explore:

• our own personal experiences of finding meaningful work.
  
• juggling meaningful work in the context of other priorities.
  
• reflections on finding work that fills rather than drains.
  
• the dangers of multi-tasking.
  
• finding joy and delight in what we do.
  

You can watch the 25 minute video or listen to the conversation below:

https://youtu.be/m3sQxG2rprQ