Is There a Gap?

‘He’s praising God on Sunday, but he will be fine on Monday’ is a typical worldview of most Christian employees or businessmen because nobody expects us to be any different on Monday. We worship God on Sundays and fail to worship Him on Monday, in and through our work. Worship on Sunday and work during the weekdays is the gap we have created to separate our words and deeds between sacred and secular. For a Christian, everything is sacred. We need to glorify God in everything we do - work, family, business, or profession.

As a lawyer, dealing with the transfer of property, among other work, I am required to deal with Government departments. Once, early in my career, a client asked me how I, as a Christian, was comfortable with the payment of bribes to get a deed of sale registered or to obtain a No Objection Certificate, etc. I brushed it aside by feebly stating that we live in a corrupt country and that if you cannot beat the system, you need to join it.

I was wrong on various counts. But the main reason was that I had unknowingly created a gap between my work and worship. I was raising my hands on Sunday and handing over bribes on Monday. Praise be to God that I learned my lesson fairly quickly and changed my ways. Now everything I do as a Christian is sacred.

The real proof of our worship lies not in our words but in our lives lived outside the Church. This is the reason why Paul exhorts us to worship God – in whatever we do. He means to say that our work is the only way our bosses and colleagues will come to know our God.

We cannot praise and worship God on Sunday and dishonor him on Monday by bribing, corruption, and resorting to illegal means to earn profits. We need to treat our workplaces as holy as we treat our churches on Sundays. The words we use on Sunday are the same words we need to use during the week. Let us bridge the gap.

Lord, grant me the grace to bridge the gap between my work and worship. Amen