Last Day...

In a couple hours I'll take my Romans final. My prof for liturgical prayer is making lunch for the class, and then I'm home free. Can't wait to see Alyssa and Lucas again. Three weeks away from them is too long.

Having said that it's been a good three weeks. This could end up being my last summer here, so I've tried to savor the place. Went to evening prayer and The Grotto last night, went to morning prayer this morning. I'll miss it, but it's time to re-enter normal life.

The main thing I take back with me is this prayer: "O Lord, you are my maker and my judge." It may sound like a simple-minded prayer, so let me explain, because I think it's rich. One of Paul's main points in Romans is that the life of faith begins with recognizing God as God. Sin, on the other hand, begins with, sometimes despite knowing God, a refusal to acknowledge God as God. Recognizing God as God requires that we accept our utter contingency, our complete state of dependence on God. Paul suggests it is the inability to accept this contingency as a gift that results in a life of acquisitiveness and self-focused competition. If one accepts life as a gift, suddenly any reason for competition evaporates.

The way this works out for me is that I make my work my god. I have never thought of myself as a workaholic, but this class helped me to see that I really am. Work gets into me, it makes me anxious; sometimes I can't enjoy dinner with my family because I'm bound up in knots over something at work. I, in fact, derive my identity from my work, which makes me less than human. It is only in seeing God as God that I become more human because I was made in the image of God. As images of God, the only appropriate locus of worship for humans is God.

And since only God is my judge, I needn't worry about what others think as much as I do. People shy away from God as judge, but I think it's liberating. If my bosses are not my judge, if I myself am not my own judge, a whole lot of stress melts away. No, the Lord is my judge, and I really should work as if unto him. God does not want me to be stressed out and anxious and frenetic at work. If I worked as if unto God, I imagine myself going at a slower, more deliberate pace. I imagine having my priorities straight so that the smallest little does throw me off. I imagine myself having more time to be nurturing to my colleagues.

That's a bit jumbled, but hopefully it makes sense. Last night as I fell asleep I prayed it over and over again: "Lord, you are my maker and my judge."