My Friends Post Their Jobs

Three of them posted this month.

One with the badge photo. One with a paragraph about being excited to announce. One with the word finally in it, which was the one that stayed with you.

And you have a shift on Saturday that starts at six in the morning and you have not told anybody what it is.

I want to take the feed apart properly, because it is doing something to you that is worth about ten minutes of honesty.

You are not behind anybody, and a feed of announcements has never once been a report on how other people's lives are going.

Here is the first thing, and it is arithmetic rather than encouragement.

Nobody posts the middle. Nobody posts a Tuesday. Nobody has ever posted the sentence: I have been in this job eight months and I do not think I am any good at it.

So what you are seeing is not thirty lives. It is the top one percent of thirty lives, edited by the people living them, arriving in your hand all at once in a way that no human being before about fifteen years ago ever had to process.

And your Saturday shift is competing against a compilation.

Let every man prove his own work

There is an instruction in Galatians that is, quite specifically, about not doing this.

But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. (Galatians 6:4, King James Version)

Prove his own work. Rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

That is not a verse about modesty. It is a verse about where a person gets their measurement from, and it says plainly: from your own work, not from the person next to you.

You are given a measuring instrument that does not involve anybody else, and a life measured against your own work has never once come out the way it does when measured against a feed. Galatians 6:4 says let every man prove his own work, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put the comparison out of bounds in that sentence.

And the word prove is worth a second. It means test. Assay. Put it under something and see what it actually is.

That is an active thing you do to your own work. It is not a feeling you have about it after seeing somebody else's.

You have been handed a test to run rather than a feeling to wait for, and work examined honestly has never once come back with the same answer as work compared. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest look possible, and it is written in Galatians 6:4 that the rejoicing comes after the proving.

What is actually true about Saturday

So let us prove the work, which is what that verse asks for, and let us do it plainly.

On Saturday you will get up at five. You will be somewhere on time. You will do a job that has to be done, that somebody genuinely needs doing, and you will be paid for it.

That is four true things about a person, and every one of them is a thing an employer, a landlord, a wife and a friend would all value.

None of them make a post. All of them make a life.

You are able to list four true things about your own Saturday, and honest work done on time has never once been less real than an announcement. The written word tells a person to examine what they have actually done, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an accurate look possible.

And here is the second half of it, and this one is for later rather than for now.

The people posting are not lying and they are not your enemy. Some of them will be posting a different thing in two years when it goes wrong, and they will find out then what you are finding out at twenty three, which is what a person does when there is no announcement to make.

You are learning something at your age that most people meet a decade later, and a hard early stretch has never once been a bad place to learn how a person keeps going. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the learning, and Galatians 6:4 puts the rejoicing in what a person has actually done.

Take it, and say it out loud once

So the assignment, and it is going to be uncomfortable, and it is the whole point.

Take the shift, and tell one person plainly what you are doing and why. Galatians 6:4 says let every man prove his own work, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is standing there while a person says out loud what they have taken on.

Tell one person. Not a post. A person, in a room, with their face in front of you.

And say the why part, which is the half everybody skips. I am doing this because the money is needed and I would rather work than not work. Galatians 6:4 keeps a person measuring their own work, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing in the room while both halves get said.

You are able to say both halves to one person this week, and a sentence said to a face has never once landed the way a sentence typed into a feed does. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in an ordinary conversation, and the written word puts the rejoicing in a man's own work rather than in what anybody else thinks of it.

And a practical thing, which is not spiritual advice and is the most useful sentence in this article. Put the phone face down for the two hours before that shift.

You are able to turn a phone over for two hours, and one small physical act has never once been too slight to change what a person walks into a morning carrying. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody at five in the morning, and it is written in Galatians 6:4 that the measure is a man's own work and nobody else's.