From the book ‘The Holiness of Everyday Life’, Joan B. MacDonald shared:
Discipline, evaluation, striving for excellence, and developing personal integrity—these are common experiences of the workplace that help develop character. But developing character isn’t enough. I said at the beginning that work can develop and reveal our souls. A soul is more than character. To develop one’s soul implies a deep spiritual effort, and to be spiritual implies a connection with God..
Many people, both in and out of the Church, hunger for a deeper connection to God in their daily lives. How do we get that connection? What are we really after? Why do we sometimes hurry through busy days, wondering, “Is this all there is?” I don’t know about you, but I need more. I need meaning and I need God shining through and revealing himself around me. I think most of us do. We need to see, understand, and experience God. We also need to know and understand ourselves. We want to know our strengths and our weaknesses, why we do what we do, and how we can do better. Finally, we want to know that these two things connect. We want to know that God loves us and accepts us as we are, and we want to experience him helping us become even better, every day and in every situation. We are in luck, because the revealing of God, of ourselves, and of the connection between ourselves and God occurs all around us, and it occurs a lot at work. The key to seeing it is awareness.
We start by becoming aware of what work teaches us about ourselves. Do we approach work eagerly or reluctantly? Are we fast or slow, careful or sloppy? What do we do well? Are we kind or harsh, encouraging or critical? If we but pay attention to what we do and how we are while we are doing it, we can learn a great deal about ourselves. As we work at this learning and then at improving, we can invite our Heavenly Father into the process to help us bring our behavior and attitudes closer to his. Once we start inviting our Heavenly Father into our efforts at work, we have done a great thing—we have started to think about God while we are at work. We have opened our minds and thus our consciousness to the possibility of God’s presence in the workplace. Then we are ready for the next step, looking for ways God might reveal himself to us at work.
We are accustomed to thinking of God as revealing himself through prayer, scripture study, dreams and visions, and even history—but through work? Well, of course. We need only remember how God reveals himself most often. Think of Moses, Joseph Smith, Abraham, Lehi, Nephi, Ruth, Mary, your Bishop, or your home or visiting teacher; God most often reveals Himself through the lives and actions and words of people. Workplaces are therefore a veritable treasure-house. They are not only filled with people, but they are filled with many different kinds of people. Work is often the only place where we are exposed to any cultural diversity. Because of that diversity, God can reveal to us in new and sometimes surprising or challenging ways. ~Joan B. MacDonald, The Holiness of Everyday Life (Deseret Book, 1995), 8-9
