You cry out for a hedge of protection and a wall of fire around your job, for your coworkers to appear and for every stubborn problem to be removed. This is no small request, but consider what kind of help you truly seek. When you ask God to bring others to work and give you spiritual strength, you are asking for what is good, yet the way of patience in such trials may be His truest answer. If He smooths every obstacle entirely, where is the ground for your soul to grow strong? We receive assistance from above, but unless we contribute our own share, we cannot obtain that help. The daily pressures, the uncooperative colleagues, even the harassment you name, these become the very field where spiritual strength is won.
Do not think the greatest deliverance lies in having every burden lifted. True freedom is not needing many things to go your way. The gentlewoman who goes forth with only two servants walks in philosophy and respectability; she who needs a crowd follows vainglory and makes herself inferior to slaves. So in your workplace, if you must have all circumstances bow to your ease, you will be a servant to your own desires. But if you stand content, doing your part with a quiet mind, you come nearer to an angelic liberty. Let the companions of your daily labors become partners in a spiritual traffic. When you see a coworker falter, reach out to steady them, not simply to lighten the work, but to gain a brother. Brother aided by brother becomes a fortified city, and this kind of profitable friendship hinders the very strife you now lament.
You pray for persecution and harassment to cease. It is right to ask for relief, yet remember what is truly at stake. Before we had Christ’s gift, sin delivered the death of the body, and the wound required the Lord of all to die for its remedy. If after so great a liberation we willingly give ourselves up again to rivalry, bitterness, and the passions that breed harassment, we become slaves once more, and the wages are a death far worse than the first. Do not run into that pit. If you bear wrongs with the meekness that comes from the Spirit, no weapon formed against your spirit can prosper. But if you seek only external calm without taming the inward man, you gain little.
Do not neglect the constant study of the sacred writings and the exhortation of one another. Your attendance in the assembly of believers must bear fruit; coming in and going out unchanged leaves you empty. The angels traverse the world needing no attendant, and if you learn to lean on God with fewer demands, you will find a strength that makes a way where no way seems possible, not always by removing the trouble, but by transforming your soul within it. Labor, then, with those whom God has placed near you, even the difficult ones, and give yourself to prayer not only for coverage but for genuine love toward them. Their faults, borne with patience, become a trading that enriches your account with God.
If you obtain all the smoothness you ask for but miss the profit of endurance, what have you gained? Lazarus lay at the gate in poverty and sores and lost nothing by it; the rich man feasted sumptuously and gained no comfort from his ease. None can rescue you from a far worse condition if you seek only outward rest and do not lay hold of the true help, the cleansing of your heart, the putting to death of resentment, the cultivation of humility. Pray, then, for the wall of fire, but let it first be the fire of divine love burning away all that is selfish. Help your fellow workers, bear their weaknesses, and in so doing you will find the very coverage you long for. Go now in this mind, and God Himself will be your shield and your exceedingly great reward.