“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men…” (Col 3:23 NIV)

I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I was a college freshman and had stayed up most of the night before laughing and talking with friends. Now just before my first class of the day my eyelids were feeling heavier and heavier and my head was drifting down to my desk to make my textbook a pillow. A few minutes nap time before class couldn’t hurt, I thought.

BOOM! My head jerked up and my eyes snapped open wider than saucers. I looked around with my heart pounding trying to find the cause of the noise. My young professor was looking back at me with a mischievous, boyish grin on his face. He had intentionally dropped the stack of textbooks he was carrying onto his podium. “Good morning!”, he said still smiling. “I am glad to see everyone is awake. Now let’s get started.”

For the next hour I wasn’t sleepy at all. It wasn’t from the shock of my professor’s textbook alarm clock either. It was instead from the fascinating discussion he lead. With knowledge and good humor he made the material come alive. His insights were full of both wisdom and loving-kindness. And the enthusiasm and joy that he taught with were contagious. I left the classroom not only wide awake, but a little smarter and a little better as well.

I learned something far more important than not sleeping in class that day too. I learned that if you are going to do something in this life do it well, do it with joy, and make it an expression of your love. What a glorious place this would be if all of us did our work joyously and well.

What a beautiful world we could create if every doctor, teacher, musician, preacher, cook, mechanic, waitress, businessman, fisherman, poet, miner, farmer, and laborer made their work an expression of their love. Don’t sleepwalk your way through life then. Wake up! Let your love fill your work and God’s love fill your soul. Life is too short not to live it well.

Joseph J. Mazzella joemazzella@frontier.com