Every one of us has a "good work" to do in life, which accomplishes something needed in the world while completing something in us. When it is finished a new work emerges which will help us to make green a desert place, as well as to scale another mountain in ourselves. The work we do in the world, when it is a true vocation, always corresponds in some mysterious way to the work that goes on within us.
To acknowledge the Sacred within is humbling. One's ego portrays itself as the captain of its separate destiny, like an intrepid explorer, seeing things and naming them for the first time. Ego doesn't care for the idea that MY hunger for love, MY grief, and MY thankfulness are not only mine but also God's in me. As our egos die into Love, we see that our personal stories are transparent to an infinitely larger story within us. Suffering "in God" is allowing our small stories to be like icons, transmitting a Great Light.