Interesting facts about working from home: Finding the ‘perfect peace’ of God

I am working from home these days, as are millions of
others. Before the pandemic, I worked primarily from my office along with our
ministry team. Now I’m doing everything from my home study that I did there.

Could this be the future for more of us than ever before?

A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NEBR) shows that 37 percent of jobs in the US can be done at home. These jobs account for 46 percent of all wages. This is because higher-paying jobs in finance and professional services sectors can be done from home, but fewer lower-paying jobs in retail, agriculture, hotels, or restaurants are able to be done remotely.

Currently, about 5 percent of US workers work from
home. One analyst expects that number to double after the COVID-19 crisis. This
will have profound effects on technology requirements (companies will increase
their budgets for hardware and software), consumer behavior (more people will
shop online and corporate travel will fall), and leisure time (fewer workers
will commute).

According to the NEBR study, the top five metropolitan areas for working from home are San Jose, California; Washington, DC; Durham–Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Austin, Texas; and San Francisco. Nearly half of the jobs in these areas could feasibly be done from home.

Finding the ‘perfect peace’ of God

I am
old enough to remember a day when you worked at work and went home to be home.
Except for the occasional call after hours (which we could let the answering
machine catch), there was a physical and psychological barrier between our work
lives and our home lives.

Then
came pagers we carried everywhere; fax machines and second lines at home;
mobile phones; laptop computers; and of course, the internet. Now there’s
hardly a place on the planet we can go that work cannot follow.

Counselors
say that these days of blurred work/home distinctions can be especially
difficult for us emotionally and mentally. They…