Ephesians 6:5 - The Boss is watching...!

"The slaves, be obeying the lords according to flesh with fear and trembling in sincerity of your heart, as to Christ...’

-As to Christ.  As to Christ.  Just as if He were watching (which of course He is).  As if He could see everything I do and knew every motive of my heart (which He does).  I have one all-encompassing Lord in heaven - in a rather spiritual and metaphysical and very real and eternal sense He is the One with Whom I have to do constantly.  But physically speaking (in the flesh), I have others (who my Lord in heaven has placed) in authority over me, whom I must obey.  Obedience - listening under (to) them - looks much the same as it does for a child towards his parents.  Except even as an adult who serves under the authority and at the pleasure of another person, I find myself again in a place of brokenness.  (Like a child) I don’t always listen to them, or do what I am told.  I am all-too wont to try and mitigate the miseries of work - a true son of Adam trying desperately to minimize the consequences of the fall.  I am tempted to cut corners and monkey around and mail it in when (I think) the boss is not looking.  Or I roll my eyes and give it less than my all, a half-baked half-hearted one-cheek effort for a fallen superior.  Supervisor/manager/boss - they’re all imperfect.  Truth is, I’m not fooling anyone - everything I do "in hiding" is gonna come out some day, you can count on that (Luke 8.17).  But our bar is higher, true Christian, so much higher than that.  We serve the Lord, and He sees.  Constantly watching (over) us, we are the apple of His eye!  He sees us and cares about us.  And He cares about how we do what we do, because whatever we do, we do unto Him (cf Matthew 25.40, Matthew 25.45, Colossians 3.23, 1Corinthians 10.31, Colossians 3.17, 1Peter 4.11).  Yes.  Work.  Is.  Worship.  In every endeavor, including our work, He is worthy of everything we got, nothing less than our all.  We live and work in the constant presence of almighty God - we must get this thru our thick skulls, and let this truth transform our work.  It should not matter one hill of beans who is our boss or whether or not they are present and accounted for.  Christ is here, He showed up to work today, or whatever I am doing wherever I am doing it, and He is watching.  That simple, awesome truth should inspire circumspect awe - fear and trembling - and genuine, sincere obedience.  Because I am (or should be) doing it all for Him.

And now for something completely different:

Late one night, a burglar broke into a house that he thought was empty. He tiptoed through the living room but suddenly he froze in his tracks when he heard a loud voice say; “Jesus is watching you.”

Silence returned to the house, so the burglar crept forward again. “Jesus is watching you,” the voice boomed again.

The burglar stopped dead in his tracks. He was frightened. Frantically, he looked all around the room. In a dark corner, he spotted a bird cage and in the cage was a parrot. He asked the parrot: “Was that you who said Jesus is watching me?”

“Yes,” Said the parrot.

The burglar breathed a sigh of relief, then asked the parrot: “What is your name?”

“Clarence,” said the bird.

“That is a dumb name for a parrot,” sneered the burglar. “What idiot named you Clarence?”

The parrot said, “The same idiot who named the rottweiller Jesus.”