Burn Out
October 22, 2007
Sometimes I feel tired. Like right now. Easy to whinge. But then I look at some of the Puritans and their committment to do the work entrusted to them, and I’m humbled. I was struck recently by some words of John Preston (1587-1628):
Spend your fat and sweetnesse for God and man; weare out, not rust out; flame out, not smoke out; burne out, bee not blowne out. (Foure Treatises, 1632)
Master of Emmanuel College, he was also Trinity Lecturer, preacher at Lincoln’s Inn (not a pub!), and a court preacher. Rushing constantly between Cambridge and London, he contended for the Reformed faith against the rise of the Laudian party, and died aged 40.
Here there was no talk of work-life balance.
