Employment!

Thanks be to God that I finally got a job. It's part time, it's retail, and it's enjoyable. Seriously! My co-workers are cool, my supervisors are nice, and (so far) customers have been generally positive.

It's hard, though, to rejoice when what you're doing is completely unrelated to what you studied. And, worse yet, we've been conditioned to see certain occupations as "beneath me". Yet all labor honestly done has inherent dignity.

I admit it- I go to fast food joints every once in a while even though I try to watch my diet. Do I enjoy it? Of course! I need someone there to cook my food, don't I? And I need people to clean up stores, to take my order at a restaurant, to cashier for me at all the different stores I visit.

All of those occupations are important to our society! As Douglas Adams pointed out in his satirical "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, the society that fired all their telephone sanitizers was quickly wiped out by a disease spread by dirty telephones. Not every job is glamorous, and not every job will impress someone on a first date.

What's important is not so much the status of a job but rather whether the laborer is fulfilled by his or her work. If they feel they've done a job well and go home satisfied (even if they're exhausted!), then it's good.

So thanks be to God for employment with a good company. Thanks for the hard work of so many people and for the fair compensation of labor. Let's continue to pray for the underemployed and the unemployed, and also for those whose work goes unnoticed.