Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
-- Colossians 3:23-25 (ESV)
John Chrysostom, Homilies on Colossians:
"He who works as for the Lord, and not for men, has freed himself from every servile fear. For he has set before him a Master who is not deceived, and a reward that cannot fail. Let the builder build, the carpenter labor, the mason lay stone -- but let each one say in his heart, 'This I do for Christ.' And if the labor be invisible to men, it is seen by Him to whom all things are naked and open."
Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening:
"The Lord Jesus Christ does not call His servants to be above their work, but to be above the spirit of the world while doing it. You may be a blacksmith and yet a saint. You may stand at a counter and yet serve the Lord Christ. It is not the occupation but the motive and the spirit that consecrate the labor."
Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor (Paedagogus), Book III:
"The faithful man works as one who has God ever before his eyes. He is diligent not because men watch, but because the Lord sees. His hands are calloused but his conscience is clean. He rises early not merely for profit, but because the sun itself is a call to faithfulness, and he would not be found idle when the Master returns."
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life:
"Do not imagine that your work is an obstacle to your spiritual life. It is the very field in which your virtue is exercised. The carpenter's shop was no hindrance to the holiness of St. Joseph. Your desk, your job site, your meeting room -- these are the places where patience, humility, and charity are tested and proven. Flee from your work and you flee from the cross God has chosen for you."
When you lay down your tools tonight and the week is finished -- will you have built something that serves men's eyes, or something that stands before God?
Begin each day by saying to yourself: Today I shall meet with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness -- all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother; therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading.
-- Marcus Aurelius, *Meditations*, II.1
St. Clair, MI: -- Currently 50°F, mist, 94% humidity, winds W 4 mph. High 87°F, low 56°F. Fog burning off by mid-morning, then mostly sunny through the afternoon. Partly cloudy late day with a chance of evening thunderstorms.