Trust

“Work as if everything depends on you, but trust as if everything depends on God.” (Gerard Verschuuren).

Madonna (Filippo Lippi)

I have been really busy at work these last few weeks.  There is just a lot going on.  And my work is a strange sort of beast because I do not just do my work, but I run my business which means that I need to think about the technical nature of the work and also the business nature of the business.  And this takes an awful lot of time and energy.

Really importantly, when a person runs a business they cannot just receive wages and go on holiday whenever they want – or at least I have not managed to do that – they have to keep switched on at all times to be aware of the dangers.  Cashflow must be considered and invoicing.  Clients need to be appeased and then there is always the added headache of staff to make sure that everything runs smoothly…

And I have been thinking about that today as I have been thinking about God.

Running a business is a little bit like God running the world.

My staff should not be worried about keeping their jobs.  After all, if they do the right thing, then it is my responsibility as the business owner to make sure that there is enough work to keep them busy and enough systems in place to facilitate a full and functional business.

If my staff were worried about the business functionality, their productivity would reduce, which would mean that we would be worse at what e do and would have a more difficult time retaining clients and a more difficult time attracting new clients to our business and helping it to grow.  As a result this worry about losing their jobs would become a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy.  The more they worried about it, the more likely it would be to happen.

And this reminds me of God.  You see, the more I worry about all the things that God is looking after for me, the more I get in the way of accepting and following His Holy Will.  After all, if I spend my time trying to see things from God’s perspective, then I am likely to waste an awful lot of time on things that are not useful to me or my purpose.

And I have been thinking about that today.  For it seems that the more I try to control everything the less I can actually achieve.

The biologist, writer and speaker, Gerard Verschuuren, once said, “Work as if everything depends on you, but trust as if everything depends on God.”

And that means that I need to rearrange my thinking…  Because if I were able to just let my Eternal “employer”, God, handle everything then I would be able to deal with my own tasks effectively and actually please my Lord.  And at the end of the day, that trust in Him to do what He needs to do, is the most important thing in the world…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.