The Coronavirus continues to drastically reshape our lives, including our approach to the workplace.
While many are experiencing temporary furlough or long-term unemployment, others are continuing to adjust to a new normal while working from home or continuing their current work as essential employees.
So what might a way forward look like for those still seeking to honor the Lord with their work?
Here are four steps we can use as guideposts to move forward and reorient ourselves to gospel realities when our circumstances hog the stage.
First, we can pray. In prayer we reorient ourselves to God, who we are in relation to this God, and how we are then to live in light of those realities. Reminding ourselves of our creatureliness reminds us that the pressure is off of us. In the past few months there have been prayers published for those working from home, for specific workers, for those experiencing unexpected unemployment, and for the sick responding to the virus. Each is worth spending time with depending on your position in the world.
Second, we can grieve. There is much pain that has been inflicted through this pandemic, and the worst may still be yet to come. Even if someone you know has not been personally affected by this disease yet, we are all experiencing fracture to our lives. A great gift we can offer to the Lord, our neighbors, and ourselves, is simply telling the truth and weeping with those who weep.
Third, we can readjust. There are shifting sands and new rhythms that are affecting each of us. Give yourself room and space to imagine how to best steward these new realities. Rather than preparing to tough out the blizzard, consider preparations you can make for a long, hard winter instead. If you’re working from home for the first time, don’t be afraid to grant yourself grace in figuring out new normals. If you’re searching for work or making excruciatingly difficult decisions for your team, seek to make the best decision with the knowledge you have today with love of God and love of neighbor at the core. The Lord goes with you with you throughout it all.
And last, we can consider thinking differently about how to bring the gospel to bear in a new cultural moment. Can you leverage your current work to best meet the world’s needs in a new manner? Can you continue doing your own work with renewed vigor seeing the grander narrative it serves? Can you trust the Lord to orient you to a new work opportunity, removing your pride and encouraging you that he is faithful? The gospel grants a way forward for redemptive imagination to take the stage amid all these questions in hearts and minds around the world.
Take heart. Though these are uncertain times with unknown alterations on seemingly every area of our lives—including our work—we can take shelter in the arms of the everlasting. He does not sleep nor slumber, and his sovereign hand is no less trustworthy than it was a few months prior.
Gage Arnold is the communications director for the Center for Faith & Work Los Angeles and an MDiv student at Covenant Theological Seminary. He holds a BS in journalism and electronic media from the University of Tennessee.