Working Without Straining

There is a kind of hard work that leaves you fuller at the end of the day, and a kind that leaves you hollow. Both can look identical from the outside. The difference is often not the amount of effort but its source. Anxious effort comes from the fear that if you stop, everything falls apart. Fruitful effort comes from being connected to something that supplies what you need.

Jesus told his disciples that a branch cannot bear fruit by itself. It has to remain in the vine. He was talking about spiritual fruit, but the principle reaches into an ordinary Tuesday at work. The Christian who begins the day connected to Christ, who has prayed even briefly and remembered whose they are, works differently from the one who is running on fear. The tasks are the same. The strain is not.

A practical lesson for the working week is to check your source before you check your inbox. Ask whether you are working from the vine or working to prove something. If it is the second, stop for a minute and remain. Then get on with it. The work will still be there, and you will likely do it better, because branches bear fruit and anxious people mostly bear more anxiety. Apart from him you can do a great deal of activity. You cannot do the thing that lasts.