Grace vs. the Economy (& Me)

I got a job today!   I am so excited, and feel so blessed, to be chosen as a new counselor for Hope Clinic for Women.  Even before the second interview, I knew that I badly wanted this job – that, of all the jobs for which I’d applied this summer, this was the one about which I felt most passionate and fired up.  Of course, in my mind, that meant I was most unlikely to actually GET the job.

Talking it over with my friend, I found myself saying, “It’s not so much that I don’t have a God of abundance, but that I have issues with ‘deserving’ grace, and we live in a culture of scarcity.”  Each part of that is true – but mostly the middle bit.

I had a hard time feeling hopeful this summer.  Panicky, desperate, despondent all made a few appearances, but hope was a challenge.  Unemployment has had a chokehold on some of the people I love for a very long time, and on some level I believed I didn’t deserve to get a job until they did.  It wouldn’t be fair – and I am determined, perhaps in vain, for my theology to be “fair”.

God IS abundance, of course – God’s inherently inclined to want and do the best for everyone.  But we get in God’s way.  Our economy and cultural worldview seems to prevent many business people from taking a chance on hiring folks, investing in them, embracing the opportunity to take care of neighbors by providing health care.  But even that is not fair; every business leader has a responsibility to their families, their employees, and their shareholders to protect livelihoods, and that may mean erring on the side of caution in many ways.  Or, you know, some folks are greedy – but not everyone.  The moral of the story is that there seems to be a low-grade panic throughout the economy, lessening only slightly over the last year or so, which makes job security very much scarce.

And now I have a job.  Someone has taken a chance on me and is willing to invest training in me so that I can serve people who need help.  I can hardly believe my good luck, and am irrationally worried that I imagined the whole hiring phone call.  But the fact is that I am hired, and that is so validating.

Coming up to my baptism next week, this morning’s news has reminded me that I need to reconcile my idea of an abundant God with my skepticism of grace.   On the one hand, believing that good and bad things just happen as a matter of luck means that God’s not involved in bad things happening to good people, which (kind of) takes care of the suffering & meaning issue.  On the other, this perspective gives almost ALL the power to the people, and contradicts my own felt need for the peace and humility of learning how to “let go and let God”. 

When my dad ordered a cake for the potluck after next week’s baptism service, he asked the bakery to write, “Welcome to Life More Abundant”.  That's going to stick with me, even beyond however long it takes for me to fully understand it.  In all this confusion of gratitude and doubt and guilt and joy, I want to focus on faith.  I want to be willing to live a “Life More Abundant.”