Christian Work Life Balance and Family Values
Since the dawn of industrialism, most of us have maintained a good work life balance, enjoyed the love of a supporting family and still managed to uphold Christian values. But since the 1950’s commercializing and economic thinking have started to dominate all our fields of life.
It seems that nowadays work is competing with our personal lives and especially our family lives. Lots of people have problems balancing their life and work as the line between the two is increasingly blurred.
Work today is individualized and terms like “flexibility” and “mobility” (like working from home) are everyday terms we commonly use, resulting in many of us working to the limit. The tendency is to squeeze as much as possible into every single minute of the day, like simultaneously driving the car and using the cell phone, thus replacing our Christian beliefs and values with a much more frantic lifestyle that God never intended us to have.
The idea of harmony between work and life has existed through the centuries. As we can read in the bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, everything should have its time; a snippet of which is below:
1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
God wanted us to rest on the seventh day. God intended us all to work, and the workplace is a very important aspect of our lives, but we have to dedicate some part of our time to our families.
Pope Benedict the 19th said, "the family is the main place where every human being learns to love and to receive love", therefore family life is the basic fundament of society.
In order to simplify life we have to combine work and family life and create a harmonic work life balance. The increasing pressure from work needs to be put aside and to give more love and time to our families, something which does not exist anymore. The most precious things in life are a family life, no matter how simple a life it is.
In Mathew 6:24-34 Jesus tells us that we shouldn’t always work.
Our lives can be simplified, and we can find the right work/life balance in order to regain our very basic values and methods to maintain a simple life. Think about some of the ways you can simplify life yet still find great joy. Most of those occasions will involve time spent with your family and away from your workplace. We can start living today and worry less about what might happen tomorrow and we have all the tools we need at our disposal.
Finish Strong.
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