Too Many Bosses
How many "bosses" have made demands of you in the past three
days? Count them. These people may not have overtly told you what to do, but
they had expectations which required your energy and resources. They had
control. You felt a duty to perform what they said and your time was not your
own.
While you are counting bosses remember that a "boss" is more
than someone who pays you money. You might not think of children as a boss, yet
their needs make requirements that you must fill and their schedules control
your use of time. What about the demands of your mother-in-law? Or, the
expectations of your kid's school? Don't forget the church.
And, as long as we're
counting bosses, don't' forget to include yourself. How many times in the past
three days did you order yourself around saying, "You ought to do that / You need
to go there," or written yourself up for a mistake? At times the hardest "boss"
in our world is the one that lives inside our head.
Have you ever thought how great it would be to have only one
boss? One voice which was not capricious when giving directions and didn't
constantly change moods. Someone that understood both your strengths and
weaknesses then built your daily obligations around those two realities. Can
you imagine what a pleasure it would be to get up and to go to work each
morning?
The good news is, you can have such a boss. It isn't easy to
work out the details in daily living, but it can be done. Our verse today tells
us how.
When the apostle Paul wrote Colossians he was speaking to
slaves; the lowest of the low. Anyone could order a slave around. Yet Paul knew
if these slaves could get their eyes off the physical world and on the eternal,
they would feel free inside no matter what task they performed each day or how
many bosses gave them orders.
If the slave could live each day with the attitude that every
chore was being done for and to Jesus Christ everything would change. Every
task would be lighter and the slave's attitude toward himself would change. No
longer "low man on the totem pole," he would spend his days in the service of
the King of Glory.
He would also be free from the tyranny of trying to live up
to the expectations of dozens of people at once. Doing the best he could for Jesus, one
chore at a time, was all that was needed because Jesus was writing the only job
evaluation that mattered.
Are you ready to have only one boss? You can. It's not easy
to embrace a new attitude and the skill may take a little time to learn, but it's worth the effort; especially if you're surrounded by too many bosses,
sub-bosses and those who just think they are boss!
