When people give everything to their jobs, they become decreasingly unable to focus on important matters in the rest of their lives. Intense commitment to a job can leave people burnt out and struggling. But because the nature of life is to have hard work, the solution is not to run away from it. This quote from 18th-century author William Law addresses this beautifully:
“You see them all the week buried in business, unable to think of anything else, and then spending the Sunday in idleness and refreshment, in wandering into the country, in such visits and jovial meetings as make it often the worst day of the week. Now they do not live thus because they cannot support themselves with less care and application to business; but they live thus because they want to grow rich in their trades and to maintain their families in such figure as a reasonable Christian life has no occasion for. Take away but this desire, and then people of all trades will find themselves at leisure to live every day like Christians, to be careful of every duty of the gospel, to live in visible course of religion, and to be every day strict observes of both private and public prayer. Now the only way to do this for people to consider their trade as something that they are obliged to devote to the glory of God, something that they are to do only in such a manner that they may make it a duty to him.*”
Anyone who has worked a stressful job can relate to the phrase at the beginning of the quote: buried in work and unable to think of anything else. In fact, I’d say that is probably even more of a common issue today than it was in William Law’s day, because while work could be consuming then, it did not keep you up in the same way that technology does today. More than ever, we have the ability to take many of our jobs home with us. We can run businesses online, take our corporate laptop with us for the weekend, and take phone calls on Sundays if it seems important enough. Work becomes all-consuming.
When we spend our entire week absorbed in work, we are unable to think of anything else. Then, when Sunday arrives (or any other important event), we cannot give it the energy and attention it deserves. It’s not because we worked, but because we gave too much to our work that it took from our faith. Doing enough to provide for ourselves or our family is important, but going beyond that can often have the reverse effect by making us less present, focused, and effective at home. Instead, let’s be Christians who do our best at work to the glory of God. If we learn to devote ourselves to God in everything we do, we might end up with a spiritual work-life balance.
* A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, emphasis mine