'm just back from a class at MIT where the students were looking at what it mean to be professional in their chosen careers. Some of you will have picked up on the subtlety there - I didn't say "ACT professional" but rather "BE professional."
Anyone can act professionally, after all acting is just showing ourselves different to who we are. Like the actors in movies, TV programmes etc. That isn't who they really are - that's just a character they're playing - and once the Director says "cut" they go back to who they really are. The problem with acting professionally is that we can't keep up the act forever. Sooner or later we'll slip back to who we really are.
But if we BE professional then we are always who we are. We aren't portraying a character - we are who we are deep inside. We don' have to worry about "slipping up" and being someone different.
For the last 6 weeks we have been looking at the life of Joseph. A man who was professional in his working life. When working for Potiphar, he was honest and a man of integrity even when he knew it could cost him everything. Which of course it nearly did when he refused Potiphar's wife's advances and he ended up in prison. In prison his ethics and morality meant he was professional even in the midst of the squalor and cruelty from the guards. And as we saw yesterday his professionalism resulted in him becoming the 2nd most powerful person in the greatest civilisation of the time - Egypt.
How can we be professional in what we do - we allow God to work in and through us. We allow him to change us so that we don't have to act because we ARE people of integrity, with high morals, who are doing everything we do as if we are working for the Lord.
May your week be blessed as you BE the child of God that God is empowering you to be
Peter
