23rd December - Young professionals

Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters

Colossians 3:23

I have seen young professionals struggling with stress and depression from impossible targets and enormous workloads. I have seen them drinking more and more often than is wise. I have seen them grey with fatigue from too many early starts and late nights. I have seen them lonely from endless nights on business trips in yet another hotel room. I have seen them miserable and hunched over their books studying for professional qualifications while their contemporaries are out socialising. With hard work comes success, promotion, professional qualifications and a secure career, but getting there is exhausting and isolating.

When you're leaving the house before most people get up, you are never going to get to morning prayer. Lunchtime communion - what lunchtime? When you rarely leave the office before 6 or 7pm, you won't make evensong or prayer group or Bible study or the Lent reading group.

Are there people yearning to be a greater part of your church family? Could you change the time of some of the things your church does to make it easier for them to come? Could you make greater use of the internet to allow them to feel a part of church life, even if it is done remotely? Social media can be a wonderful tool! Could you include them in the intercessions if they have professional examinations coming up? Could you just ask them how they're doing and how work's going occasionally rather than asking them (again) if they are thinking of getting married and having children?

Written by a church-goer from the Diocese of Durham

Daily prayer

Lord, May Your churches be havens from the pressures of the work. Grant us loving and understanding hearts that we may reach out to the young professionals in our churches that they know that they are loved and valued, and that they too are at home in the house of their father.

Amen

Lord, in this time of Advent open our hearts to those who feel excluded from Your church.
Help us draw in those on the margins and place them in the centre of our family.