04 Jun Loving Where You Work

Where do you work? Why do you work? What does God think—if anything—about our work?

Dorothy Sayers was a British mystery writer during WW II and said this:

“The church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him to not be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.”

And she’s right—so what does that look like?

It looks like this:

On February 4, 1989, United Airlines flight 811 took off from Honolulu on its way to New Zealand. The 747 had climbed to 22,000 feet when the forward cargo door of the jet blew open, tearing a huge hole in the side of the plane.

Nine passengers were immediately sucked out of the plane to their deaths. The two right engines were damaged by the debris of the doors and unusable. The plane was 100 miles from land. At that moment, the pilot, a man named Captain David Cronin, brought all his years of experience to bear on the moment, and this was what happened next:

“To compensate for the lack of thrust from the two right engines, he struggled to hold the control column steady with his hands while using his feet to put pressure on the control floor rudder to stabilize the plane.

His stickiest problem, however, was deciding how fast to fly. [He] slowed the plane as close to the stall speed as possible to keep the air rushing over the plane from further widening the hole in the fuselage.

Because the hole had changed the aerodynamics of the huge craft, the usual data regarding stall speed was no longer relevant. The pilot, [knowing] this, had to use his best judgment. Furthermore, since the plane had just taken on 300,000 pounds of fuel for the long flight; it was too heavy to land without collapsing the landing gear.

Then, he encountered a new problem. The wing flaps used to slow down the plane were not working properly. He would have to land the plane at 195 mph, instead of the usual 170 mph. The jet weighed 610,000 pounds, well above Boeing’s recommended maximum stress load of 564,000 pounds. Nevertheless, Captain Cronin made one of the smoothest landings the rest of the crew could remember, amid the cheers of the passengers.

Airline experts called the landing miraculous. A few days later…Captain Cronin was asked about his first thoughts following the loss of the cargo door. He said, ‘I said a prayer for my passengers momentarily and then got back to business.'” (William E. Diehl, The Monday Connection)

Let me ask you: when that flight was in trouble, did it matter how well Captain Cronin could communicate his faith? That mattered, but in that moment, what mattered most? His professional competency.

What mattered was how well he could do his job.

But look—in the end, did doing his job well minister to these people? I would say so. As a matter as fact, what allowed him to share his faith was his competency.

Are you an artist? Be a great artist. Are you a mother? Be a great mother. How you do what you do matters to God and others.

This Sunday, as we kick off our Love Where You Live series, I’ll be taking an extended look at amazing stories like this, all aimed at helping us love God and others right where we live—which, for all of us in some way or another, is our work.

I hope to inspire you and to perhaps even change the way you see your employment—for the better. Who knows? Maybe your boss, your co-workers and your employees’ lives might be affected by hearing this!

With love and faith,
Morgan