Are you shaping your days? ...

Friday, June 15, 2012. How are you doing in your job or in school? Are you ok? Or are you burdened by your days? Can you shape your days? Can you influence what you do? How much freedom do you have? How much can you do, how good is it what you do?

Are you shaping your activities? …

Every job has influence from different sides. Usually, you are part of some company or institution, and there are clear goals and tasks. A nurse is supposed to take care of patients. A professor is supposed to do some lecturing. A plumber is there to repair and install. You made choices in the past, and these choices determine your activities today, at least to some extent.

It might be, that we are happy with our activity. But also we can feel squeezed into it, without much choice to shape it. Are our days determined by others? For me, a lot of things seem to be determined by other parts of my institute. I get requests to answer, and that sometimes takes me days since I have to set up documents which need consultations on various levels. If you get one unplanned requests like that per week, you can forget you own planning completely. You are solely driven by external triggers!

So what possibility do I have to shape my days. Partially, it is a question of management, of course. How do I manage my activities, which flexible periods are there and when do I say no? There is a learning curve in all of this - when you change your environment, also your management style has to change! But there is more …!

Possibilities which faith gives …

Faith provides a further level of possibilities, which are not just management style. The world is not just a mechanical thing, where you need to change your input to influence the output. We need to take into account the spiritual component, need to know that God is there and that this changes everything!

We can pray. We can be with the Lord. The Holy Spirit is his way to be with us, to guide us, to lead us, to teach us, to comfort us. We can pray, and by prayer take part in his world. He has unlimited possibilities. He can change things, even if we have no idea how to even start changing or influencing something!

The world of faith is not a simple further tool to influence our environment. It is a complete change of our framework. God is the Lord, he is not just our tool to get our will realized. But he can change our days, and he will change them, when we go to him and ask him to be with us, to guide us …! Then, we are shaping our days with and through him, and he is shaping us and our environment by his wisdom and power. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts