Work & Vocation
I am stuck in a job I hate while I look for something else, and I know my attitude there has gone bad. How do I work well anyway?
“And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.”
Joseph did not choose Potiphar's house. He arrived there as a trafficked teenager, in work he had no say in, years before any of it made sense. The narrator keeps repeating that God was with him inside that house, not only after he finally left it. Where you are now may be temporary, but it is not a place God is absent from.
“And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.”
Colossians was written to a mixed congregation that included household slaves with no career prospects whatsoever. Paul reframes their labour as done for Christ rather than for the man standing over them. This is not a trick to make bad work feel good. It changes who your audience is, which is often the only thing you can change while you wait to leave.
A path forward
Pick one part of the job you have been doing carelessly and do it properly this week, not for your manager but as an offering. The quality of your work is still yours to control.
Confess the attitude to God specifically rather than in general: the sarcasm, the slow starts, the complaining at lunch. Naming it plainly is what begins to loosen it.
Set a hard cut-off for talking about the job at home, say fifteen minutes, then stop. Rehearsing resentment every evening trains you deeper into it.
Closing verse
“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”
- 1 Corinthians 10:31
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