Consider Jesus. You don’t get the sense of his being harassed and burdened, even though his task was fairly impressive. He was to be the vindicator, the redeemer, the liberator of the whole creation. He had 33 years in which to do it, and only three public years. He simply had the task of freeing the whole created order from oppression, yet he doesn’t seem overly burdened, wondering how he will possibly get it done by bedtime. You don’t hear him talking to Abba at the end of the week, “What a crazy week! The pressures are about to do me in!” In fact, the interruptions were so relaxed that all these years later we’re still extracting wisdom from some of those encounters, like the woman at the well or his conversations with his enemies who were trying to entrap him.
— N. Gordon Crosby, “Stay Centered and Enjoy”
[Thanks for reading. This post continues our series Verses for Vocation: Poems on the Sacred in Everyday Life and Work. Check out our other posts on faith and work and spiritual growth for more resources on living an integrated Christian life. Subscribe to get the next post in your inbox.]
Love So Often Interrupts
Love so often interrupts my work.
A text from Katie, or a friend.
The dishes in the sink still to be cleaned.
Children’s giggled questions and soft faces, wily my schedule to despoil.
Yet my agenda for the day I will not shirk:
Emails to send, lessons to plan, meetings to attend.
Responsibilities, puffed up as a dragon-fiend
Feed my vanity the bread of anxious toil.
Can these labors become love amid such murk?
Ego is too small a box to cram vocation in.
This little grain of wisdom I have gleaned:
When fields lie interrupted, fruits grow from fallow soil.
Explanatory Notes
- “the bread of anxious toil”: A quotation from Psalm 127:2
- “fruit grows from fallow soil”: An allusion to agricultural crop rotation and the Torah requirement to let fields lie fallow in the seventh year (see Exodus 23:10-11, Leviticus 25:1-7,18-22)
Series image: The Stevedores in Arles (Coal Barges) by Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
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