Night Shifts

https://odb.org/MY/2022/04/30/servants-of-the-night

In all of my working life I’ve only worked normal working hours. Of course I’ve worked late and long hours but they are still just stretched versions of the 9.00am to 6.00pm cycles. Nowadays more are working from home and the hours become less predictable – sometimes we start early like at 7.00 am and sometimes we end late like at 10.00 pm or 11.00 pm. In the corporate and professional sectors, work hours are less important than deliverables. In the end, we do what it takes to deliver our piece of work, whether it’s a contract, a board paper, an analysis or even a letter of offer. It’s not the hours you keep but your timely output that counts!

But there are people who work shifts like the police and health sectors although they usually take turns to work the so called “graveyard shift’. There are also people who work the night shift permanently like a member of my cell who leads call centre teams for foreign clients who are on a different timezone. More advanced countries do outsource their businesses’ call centres to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) vendors in Asia like those in India, the Philippines and Malaysia. It’s a different world altogether for people earning such a living as our sleep patterns are out of sync with the general population but it’s still worth it because the pay is good. Yet on the other hand, there are hawkers, farmers, wet market people who need to sleep very early to wake up at 2.00 am to start their day preparing for their day’s work or sales.

What is the spiritual dimension to all this? I believe that first we need to be aware that some people need to stay awake while others sleep to make sure our airports, utilities, infrastructure run smoothly. There are sacrifices made by some for the convenience of and for the amenities enjoyed by all. Like for example, when we dispose household waste into trash bins, there are people working to take them way from us. Likewise in the church and ministry, there are a lot of preparations made and work done by various ones in the background for us to be able to be a part of a Sunday service. As a whole, in the Kingdom of God, many are at work praying at all times for God’s work to run smoothly all over the world or doing things unseen by us in the background so that our faith can prosper and continue to grow to reach out to many around us.

Can we work in the night, in the background, away from the limelight for the good of the brethren? Not in the shadows where we want to be hidden but in the night, in the background where only God sees. Will we serve God nonetheless when no one notices, acknowledges or praises us? Can we be servants in the night for the Lord? That I believe is the question this morning.