Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series called “Letters from Grandpa.” Each entry is written by Cory Ishida, who was the senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church of San Gabriel Valley until his retirement. During the pandemic, he texted devotions to his grandchildren to encourage them while they were apart, and he has continued this tradition to this day. We at the SOLA Network are honored to republish Pastor Cory’s devotions in hopes that they will be a blessing to the church.
Part One: Occupational Burnout
For the sake of this devotional, the term, ‘occupation’ simply means “a job or profession.” The term, “work”, means the place of one’s occupation or employment. So what does the Bible say about work?
“Thus, I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun… 22 For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun? 23 Because all his days his task is painful and grievous; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 2:18a, 22-23)
I thought about these verses when I read the following article by C. Brian Smith.
It was a typical Monday morning at a cloud services company in Denver, except for a weeping 29-year-old project manager crouched in the emergency stairwell. Kieran Tie felt like ‘absolute trash’ that day. He could no longer bring himself to sit through pointless management meetings and pretend to (care) about on-demand enterprise data storage.
In the preceding months, he’d found it increasingly difficult to complete the simplest of tasks. Plagued with insomnia and regularly forgetting meals, he’d developed a remarkably short temper. He had stormed out of meetings when he disagreed with higher-ups, something he’d never done before in a professional setting.
Tie said, ‘I felt like a failure because I didn’t know what to do.’ The predicament confounded him because he had a great job at a growing company with talented colleagues. The hours, like the compensation (low six-figures, plus bonus) were ‘very fair,’ and he could ride his bike to the office, 10 minutes from his house. And yet, as he rocked weeping in the fetal position in a stairwell underneath a fire extinguisher for the better part of an hour, it was clear something needed to change.
The article continued with the following statistics:
Across the country, more and more people are succumbing to emotional collapse at work. Last year, The World Health Organization included the colloquial term ‘burnout’ in the International Classification of Diseases, listed as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ with three symptoms:
- Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion.
- Increased mental distance from one’s job or feeling negative toward one’s career.
- Reduced professional productivity.
Not surprisingly, 94 percent of American workers say they’re stressed at work, 75 percent of Millennials believe they’re more stressed than their parents. and 80 percent say they’re in the midst of a quarter-life crisis. So, in the next five to ten years, we will see burnout increase and a lot more mental health problems begin to emerge as a consequence.
Ecclesiastes 2:18-26 rings incredibly true in today’s world of work. Young and old alike are feeling less motivated and dissatisfied with increasing amounts of frustration and displeasure from work.
What’s the solution?
As with anything else, if we embrace a secular view of work, we will join the world of Kieran Tie. If we adopt a biblical view of work, we will gain a whole different perspective on this thing called “work.”
Some of you have already entered the marketplace of work, Most of you will be doing the same over the next decade or so. I am going to give you counsel in this area over the next several devotionals (with possible pauses for something current).
The goal is to give you a biblical worldview of work so you will not end up curled in a fetal position under a fire extinguisher.
We’ll begin the series with this verse from Colossians 3:23.
“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men…”
This Is the Way.
Love,
Grandpa