by Gerald May*
*Excerpted from his article, “Prayerfulness at Work” from Shalem’s News, Volume 29, No. 1-Winter, 2005. The full issue may be viewed here.
Jerry May wrote an article about being more prayerful in the workplace and we have excerpted parts of that article here before. He concludes his article saying:
And remember that we all have our thresholds. There are kinds and amounts of work, degrees of stress and conflict beyond which we simply cannot remain centered and open-at least not on our own. Because of this, we need to be especially gentle and compassionate with ourselves. Do not consider prayerfulness as something you succeed or fail at achieving. It is a gift, and all we can really do is claim our desire for it, pray for it, and seek to be as open as we can to the gift as it may be given. And when we do get caught up, realizing how far away we are from the way we desire to be, it’s time for a prayer like Thomas Kelly’s: “God, see, this is just how I am except it be for your grace.”
What is your experience? We can be so hard on ourselves, berating ourselves for not living up to the gold standard we set. We know we are works in progress and striving to improve oneself is wonderful. It’s the self-flagellation that we could do without. Going down that road causes us to spend all kinds of energy on what went wrong instead of seeing it as a missed opportunity and moving onward and upward. A prayer to do better next time.
Thank you, Jerry for your loving reminder.