Only Job That Pays

THE ONLY JOB THAT PAYS 

You gotta let it go

Cause its bringing you down

You gotta lift up your hands

And let your voice ring out

You oughta know by now

That hate weighs too much

I can’t wait to fly

So I gotta give it up

And love all you friends

And love all your kin

And love all your neighbors

And let love be your labor

Cause in the end

It’s the only job that pays

Let go your hurt

Let go your pain

It won’t keep you safe

It just attracts the rain

It just attracts the rain

And you gotta jump

Gotta sing it out

Lift up your hand

Let your voice ring out

Until the cold cruel world falls down

And we’ll build it again

And we’ll build it right

And let love be our labor

Oh cause in the end

It’s the only job that pays

You gotta let it go

Cause its bringing you down

You gotta lift up your hands

And let your voice ring out

You oughta know by now

That hate weighs too much

I can’t wait to fly

So I gotta give it up

Hey my friend

You are worth more than you know

I’m about to spread my wings

And I think, yeah I really think

That next it could be you

If you....

Let go your hurt

Let go your pain

It won’t keep you safe

It just attracts the rain

It just attracts the rain

And you gotta jump

Gotta sing it out

Lift up your hand

Let your voice ring out

Until the cold cruel world falls down

And we’ll build it again

And we’ll build it right

And let love be our labor

Oh cause in the end

It’s the only job that pays

The Only Job that Pays is about being born with a purpose bigger than yourself. We were each born into our generation and our family and our geography for a purpose as the Book of Acts says, many understand somehow deep inside that they were born for this generation and for this place and there is something yet to be discovered that is the reason they were crafted in their mother’s womb. Their circumstances may get in the way, they may lose their faith or lose their hope but they always “know” as the knowing of it will make a person insane if it is ignored and become as the Prophet Jeremiah called it “a fire in his bones”.
“If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in His Name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” Jeremiah 20:9
Some use the call for their own purposes, as the Pastor becomes the Motivational Speaker, the Teacher becomes the Professor, the Prophet becomes the Counselor, the Apostle becomes the Franchise Owner, the Evangelist becomes the Salesman but the Call is always there as “the Gifts of God are without repentence”. When it is misused it becomes embers and if it is ignored for long enough it will burn a man up inside and one day become just some cold ashes making his heart into an urn for all that cremated passion. The death of passion eventually brings the rest of a man to the grave with it, first his heart and then his mind and finally his body.
Passenger sings of this in the song Table for One “So I sit on this table for one and pour me a drink that will last. I’m not here to get drunk I just miss being young and I grew old so fast. My wife she breaks and she bends, my children they don’t understand. I came here to tonight in search of a friend but I am the invisible man. Because I swallowed my tongue and I polished my gun and I sat on my secrets for years. With my stiff upper lip my composure won’t quit and I have hidden each silent and salty tear. So I sit at this table for one because I have been here before. It’s a little less than I had in mind but I wouldn’’t ask for more. My mother she taught me to write and my father he taught me to trade. I wish they could both be here tonight to see what a mess I have made. Because I swallowed my tongue and I polished my gun and I sat on my secrets for years. With my stiff upper lip my composure won’t quit and I have hidden each silent and salty tear. So I sit at this table for one because I have been here before. It’s a little less than I had in mind but I wouldn’’t ask for more. No one hears me when I speak from this table for one. My sons and my daughter’s don’t know me at all. I dug out trenches and I put up walls. I whisper I love you each night as they sleep but no one hears me when I speak from this table for one. So I sit at this table for one. I won’t go until they tell me to leave. Why did they teach me to follow my dreams when dreams are all they can be?
The Jews, part of the people called to become “Priests upon the Earth’ in Exodus 19:6, meaning they are personal servants of the Creator in His Restoration of the world even have a word for this Call, it is known as “Tikkun Olam” or “The Repairing of the World”. Since we all have had all had a hand in destroying the Creation and the Creations after leaving Eden (with instructions on how to do so from fallen angels according to the Book of Enoch), we all must also have a hand in Repairing the Creation and the Creations (with instruction on how to do so from the Spirit of the Creator). The priesthood then had many functions just as it does today, the Temple Guard (today a police force and guardians of all His People), the Prophets (today writers and film makers and visionaries) the Priests (the Pastors and Leaders and Counselors), the Scribes (the Teachers) the Local Levites (the Social Workers), the Temple Singers (the Musicians) and the many other Levites with unseen work such as those who chopped the wood or did the repairs and every thankless job needed to keep the House of God ready for His people to enter into His Presence. Every day we are all paving the way for one Master or another, building the Kingdom for one King or another and Repairing the World or Tearing it Apart with each word, with each decision, with all that we say or buy or do.
Our strength and ability to face danger or endure pain for others, our minds and ability to understand and decode and explain what others cannot, our beauty and ability to make someone’s battered day heal just with our smile and the kindness in our eyes are powers that most superheroes cannot imagine, and we let them rust. Or we let these rust in others or even be misused by others, as if they were simply throwing away styrofoam trays from the take-out instead Gifts from the King.
When people are Repaired/Restored their gifting is also redeemed, which is why Love is so important. When we recover the person we recover the Gift and the Gift is the unique way that they were given to Repair the World around us. If the pipes in our house are broken and the plumber has heat exhaustion, it would be in the best interest of those living in the house to get the man a glass of water, not just out of kindness but out of the realization that this man needs to be restored so he can make the place they and their children live all that it was meant to be for them. Now if we can apply this example to those are addicted, those who are alone, those who are sick, those who are fatherless or widowed or divorced or just simply lost. Sometimes people refuse to be redeemed and that’s why we have the death penalty and prisons, as they do harm to those seeking to repair the world and the world can only withstand so much of it being torn apart, but if we had loved them before they had become so broken in the years perhaps our jails would be a lot less crowded.
With Truth given through Love, see the Drug Dealer become the Evangelist, we see the Gang Leader become the Pastor, we see the Psychic become the Prophet, we see the Rock Star become the Worship Leader, we see the Prostitute become the adoring Wife and we see the Abortion Doctor become the Pediatric Surgeon and the Sensationalist News Anchor become the Watchman on the Wall. The darkness we have walked in and the darkness we have brought to the world and to those around us is often the precise shadow of the form of light we were called to bring to the world to those around us. Instead of dispensing medicine we have spent all these years dispensing either drugs or placebos, but we can still take all that we have learned and the skills we have built and the network we have established and flip it over. We see the darkness diminish as those who bring the light grow in number and march forward because as John Paul Jackson said, “darkness can only advance at the speed in which Light retreats” or as Abraham Lincoln said “the best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend”.
“The Only Job That Pays” describes the lives of many people I admire who lived out their mission the best they could despite circumstances that prevented them from being all that they could be or were meant to be. My mother had an incredible gift for hospitality, even when we barely had food for ourselves she always offered someone who stopped by whatever we had. One of my memories of her is the day the kids from the trailer next door (we lived in a trailer park when I was in 3rd Grade) came over. They were just as poor as we were but I think their mom was on drugs or something of that nature so they not only had to shop with Food Stamps at the Save-A-Lot like we did and the dented can store when my mom had time off from her 3rd shift factory job and my dad wasn’t building houses or cutting yards, but they just didn’t get to eat because no one cared to feed them. So they came to our house and instead of sending them home when we had lunch because most people did that as they could barely afford to feed their own kids much less other people’s, my mom let them stay and they absolutely wolfed down a huge bowl of spaghetti and saltine crackers. I then made a comment I will remember the rest of my life because it was the only time I remember being actually afraid of my 5’4 Irish mother. I said to her after they left “Momma, those kids eat like pigs!” and the look she gave me expressed both anger and disappointment and without a word I learned something that will stay with me the rest of my life, not everyone has our blessings and to forget that is the first step in becoming someone you don’t want to be. It is often as Sarah McLachlan sings “the more we take the less we become”.
Jewel Kilcher described it this way in her song Hands “I won’t be made useless, I won’t be idle with despair. I will gather myself around my faith for Light does the Darkness most fear. My hands are small I know, they are not yours they are my own and I am never broken. Poverty, stole your golden shoes but it didn’t steal your laughter. How he came to visit me but I knew it wasn’t after. We will fight, Yes we will fight as no others fight. Because someone must stand up for what is right. Because where there is a man who no voice there are shadows singing. My Hands are small I know but they are not yours they are my own and I am never broken. In the end only kindness matters. In the end only kindness matters”.
Part of our training in Ninjutsu was to fight because you love and not because you hate. Hate makes us blind and weak and it burns to ashes, but love makes us see the value in who and what we are defending and sacrificing for and it gives us courage in ways that nothing else can. We fight to make our world better and not to make someone else’s worse, not because we wish to see death but because we wish to preserve life. Chris Kyle the Navy Seal Sniper once said “It is not the number of enemy lives taken that matters, but it’s the number of my brother’s lives that were saved that counts”. The heart of warrior instead of the mercenary.
We have a duty to love that doesn’t take into consideration our circumstances, as the Creator knows our circumstances and doesn’t called the equipped but equips the Called. He judges us with our circumstances taken into consideration, and “doesn’t ask someone with a broken arm to swim the English Channel” as John Eldredge reminds spouses of broken people not to do in his book “Love and War”. He simply asks us to wake up every day, and love Him and our neighbor (Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18) in the way He instructed and to teach others to do the same (Matthew 5:17-19), even a child could understand that.
My adopted Dad, who is also my Sensei, couldn’t afford to legally adopt me and also couldn’t for other reasons, but he still taught me how to fight and how to survive and how to be like Jabez and take care of the people in your territory even if no one else saw that you had a duty to them. He lives in a trailer on a patch of land composed mostly of gravel, red clay and weeds yet he feeds half the town I grew up in because once he started giving the food he grew away tomatoes he didn’t plant were growing up through gravel under parked trucks in his yard. My brother has no driver’s license and no G.E.D. or High School Diploma and no car but he finds himself working for a carpenter who builds wheelchair ramps for the elderly in his small town for free. Your gifting always finds a way to be used if you are truly looking for it in your heart, and we are not judged on our “effectiveness” but we are very responsible for our willingness if we leave “effectiveness” to Him.
Sometimes he gives us many resources and opportunities instead of a few and using these resources and opportunities for His Kingdom and to Repair the World instead of building our own Empire of Dust certainly brings just as much honor and reward as those who building with seemingly little or nothing to work with. The Father of someone very special to me grew up working class and through hard work and gifting and perseverance became a medical doctor, but instead of opening up a lucrative private practice in California and spending his weekends on a golf course or on ski trips to Aspen, he chose to dedicate his life to fighting the plague of obesity that this Nation has brought upon itself that ends so many live before their work is done and slows down so many others in their mission. Building with nothing requires both perseverance and faith, but surrendering the building of your own Kingdom to build something better requires faith and sacrifice. Both are tests that reveal the heart of a man and reveal his readiness to lead not only his family but also the Creator’s family in the Kingdom to come.
He often gives us a few people to love before He gives us many, just as He gives us a few people to lead before He gives us many. Many pastors and such have sought many people to lead all on their own, before they learned humility working retail or compassion working at a nursing home or patience working with children or compassion working with prisoners. Then they become shepherds who feed only themselves and bring greater judgment on themselves and more destruction and distrust to the world that they would have simply not leading anyone at all.
Nearly all of my jobs have been the lowest rung on the ladder, from pushing carts at Lowe’s to pushing wheelchairs at Group Home for disabled adults instead of making schedules and case management, tutoring homework at the Boy’s and Girl’s Club in the ghetto instead of being a site director, checking curfews at a halfway house for men recently released from prison instead of speaking at fundraisers and driving a van full of drug addicts in rehab to AA Meetings instead of conducting intake interviews. Keep in mind that almost all of these jobs were after I spent 4 years in the Air Force with an Honorable Discharge, visited 11 10 Countries and earned 3 college degrees to include a Master’s. It is very very frustrating an often disheartening, but I have been supernaturally held back it seems and I am not sure why. Sometimes I have an idea but it’s just an idea.
Part of me has always felt strange because I could not be satisfied with a regular job, no matter how much it paid or the title that came with it. 40 hours a week over 52 weeks a year is a lot of time to spend building someone else’s “Empire of Dust” of David Gray and Trent Reznor called it, or even your own. I understand the principle in the “Peaceful Warrior” film, to “find the love in what you do” as many fathers go to job they hate that have no meaning or purpose because their purpose is to ensure the provision of those in their territory such as their wife and children. This is noble and honorable, perhaps even more so than chasing a ministry even. I do however feel a burden and a fear of being held to account for the time I have been given, as well as the influence as well as the funds and energy and words.
When my mom died the song at her funeral was most appropriate for the life she lived, it was “Go Rest High On That Mountain” sung by Vince Gill “Son we know your life on Earth was troubled, and only you could feel the pain. You weren’t afraid to face the Devil and you were no stranger to the rain. I wish I could see the angel’s faces when they hear your sweet voice sing. So Go Rest High on that Mountain. Son your work on Earth is Done. Go to Heaven a shoutin, Praise to the Father and the Son”. Her “Work on Earth was done”, all she was meant to do, which was small in the eyes of most, loving my brother and I and teaching us the ways of The Creator as best she knew them from the Baptist Church, but I pray that one day those seeds will multiply into a greater harvest than she knew.
Maybe all the seemingly wasted time now is a preparation for something larger, maybe it’s a test to see if I will love when no one is watching without developing a bitter and hard heart because no one is watching or seemingly being changed (the Test of Obscurity as John Paul Jackson calls it), maybe it is just that I don’t have parents so I could never work for free at an internship for six months to get a Counseling or Teaching License and I should have taken that into consideration when I started those degree programs. All I know to do is to keep fighting for those I love every day, in whatever capacity my very limited resources allow me to which makes me glad that I am a writer because Facebook is Free and there are hurting people there and also misinformed people there who need the words I have been given in moments of inspiration, to pass out weapons to the warriors.
I cannot answer for you how you are called to Repair the World, what tools you will have, or how long on this Earth you have before your work is declared to be either “Done” or “Refused”, but I know you have a work and you have a deadline as you are human as I am and you and I are both equally guilty for trashing Eden and both a responsible for replanting those seeds all that we can here on Earth.
In the words of Country Singers Big and Rich “I’m going to live this life until this life won’t let me live here anymore, then I am going to walk with patience through that open door. I have no fears, angels follow me wherever I may go. I’m going to live this life until this life won’t let me live here anymore”,
On the night of December the 11th, 2013, which would have been the day before my 7th wedding anniversary if I wasn’t sleeping on a stranger’s couch in the ghetto with my daughters taken from me because a divorce made me homeless 3 months earlier, I was given my part in Tikkun Olam no matter how impossible it looked at the moment or how broken my own heart was at the time. I was simply given the mission of “Fighting For Hearts” by any and all means necessary. Books, Music, Words, however it takes I am to fight for the fatherless and the struggling marriages and the broken hearted and all those whose pain is hindering their own Repairing of the World, but especially the Fatherless and the Struggling Covenant. And helping The Creator’s Sons and Daughters know the White Stone Name that He has given to each of them, who He made them to be, not who the world says they are or the names that the world has called them by for their whole lives.
If you are in my situation that is all you can do as well, “Keep (guard and value) even the least of the Commandments and teach others to do likewise (with your words and your example) and you will be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven” as Matthew 5:17-19 promises us. You see our love is never wasted, even when our potential seems to be. The Kingdom 401K is much better than the Business Kingpin 401K, and it is better to be a Janitor of Jerusalem than a CEO of Babylon.
Brandon Heath wrote a song called “Love Does” that expresses Tikkun Olam perfectly. “This one goes out to the world changer, Shining your light in the face of danger. Oh, tell us what you know. You’re a saint, you’re a son, you’re a promise keeper. Bottom of the well, still digging down deeper, Oh, how far you gonna go. Chasing down hope Moving on dreams. Taking that path Maybe it’ll lead you home. Maybe it won’t.
Nobody knows why your heart is broken
Nobody cries wile your prayers are going up
But Love does, Nobody walks on the road you’re paving
Nobody sees all the souls you’re saving, Oh, but Love does
Love does, Love does
You are a renegade, You’re an outlaw of Love’s crusade
And they don’t know who you are, They don’t know
They don’t know, But Love does
I’m telling you, Love does”
So I don’t know WHO you are my friend, but Love Does.
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