What I try to keep front and center is that my calling is to be, visibly and noticeably, an example of Christlikeness. At work I probably interact face-to-face with a dozen people a day, and maybe thirty more by phone or e-mail. My accountability to Christ is to make each of those encounters grace-bearing.

To whatever extent people remember me as a peaceful, kind, patient guy who doesn’t join in gossip or mockery, I’m doing my job. When I unselfconsciously share about what my parish family and my subculture are doing (so that the conversation is leavened with God-talk), if it’s natural and unaffected, then it’s not offensive – in fact it makes people want some.

Personally I don’t buy the job-as-vocation line; it flows too naturally from a social need to replace monasticism in post-Reformation Europe. And I’d love to have a job with some visible significance, even as I recognize that as a kind of pride. But by Gods mercy I’m in a job I don’t hate, one where I seldom break a sweat, and one where I can even post on the Internet from time to time To me the eternal value of my work isn’t in the elegance of my HTML or ColdFusion code, or in the quality of my content management. It’s in how I incarnated the life of the Gospels for the dozen co-workers I touch daily. They’re my mission field, and I’m going to have to answer for how I served them.