Thou know’st not what is good for thee,
But God doth know, —
Let Him they strong reliance be,
And rest thee so. – C. F. Gellert
Every now and then I hear someone utter, “that job is beneath me,” or “that job is beneath her.” I’ve had some interesting jobs in my life from cleaning out sewers during the summer of my sixteenth year to some that are pretty high up there in prestige. I had some jobs way low on the prestige and pay scale, but none that were “beneath me.” If that thought ever crossed my mind, I am sure I got my comeuppance pretty quickly. For nothing makes you appreciate another human being as doing their job for a while.
The same goes to the work that is assigned to us by God. He doesn’t assign us any task that is not the right thing for us to do or be doing. When we start telling God, “This is not my place, I am capable of something higher, or this job is beneath me” we are rebelling against God. Aspirations and dreams are one thing, but to belittle one’s current calling as “beneath you” replaces your judgment for God’s.
My father worked in construction all his life after college and WWII and Korea. I am confident that he had me work as a menial construction worker, cleaning sewers, digging ditches, and much nastier jobs to make me appreciate an education and my fellow man. I wouldn’t have dared to suggest to him that some job was beneath me because he at some point had done the same job himself, more importantly somebody had to do it and who was I to think I was better than anyone else. My father drilled that into me. When our spiritual father, God gives one of us a task the same applies. In God’s eyes no man or woman is better than another. No job or person is ever “beneath one.”
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