As part of my ongoing assessment of how I spend my time I am undergoing an assessment of where I am most productive, in the work context.

My goals in Connecting with the Purposes of God do not include a goal for work because I believe that work is an expression of my mission statement across all of my three purposes:

• Devoting my time to discovering the mystery of God’s purpose through study, prayer and mediation and in so doing discover God’s purposes for me as an individual
• Devoting my time to my wife and children and in so doing discover the purposes of God for the family
• Devoting my time to the service of others and in so doing discover God’s purposes for the Cross of Jesus Christ

I have to work in the context of these, not in the context of work. Work needs to be an expression of something else, not an end in itself.

So by assessing my productive I am also assessing how the work place impacts on my ability to interact with my family and others.

My friend Lee left me this comment on one of my posts (you know the one with a story of a professor who talks about the things that fit into a jar):

Nice message. It’s only too easy (maybe more so for men) to have only 2 contents in the jar, pebbles and sand. Instead of golf balls I may fill my jar with only a few tennis balls as any free time is spent with my immediate close family, I need to make an effort to visit my parents, brother and sister, and further extended family. People I sometimes come across in my work life make me forget that I actually work to live and don’t live to work!

Lee and I work in the same organisation so I am going to avoid talking about specific people, but how true he is. Work is about work for so many people, they are focussed on work and little else. But I believe that there is so more to life than that. I have been trying to formulate my thoughts over a few posts, these are all under the “My Time” category.

As part of studies in to my mission statement I recently listened to a sermon from Knox County Vineyard in which the Pastor references studies about happiness during retirement for people who volunteer.

It’s one of my objectives to “Devoting my time to the service of others and in so doing discover God’s purposes for the Cross of Jesus Christ”. I’ve not set myself this objective in order to get a happy retirement, I have set it because I believe that it is the call of the Christian to serve others. But it’s interesting to note that God honours those who connect with His purposes (even if they don’t know they are).