Yielded Chapter

Maybe you've seen or heard the latest unemployment figures being reported in the news: Jobless Rate Jumps to 7.2%; Unemployment Rate Hit 16-Year High; 524,000 Job Eliminated..................and the many more headlines that continue to be captured by every news outlet.

Talk about sobering news. Talk about uncertainties. Talk about the reality of a rude awakening. Talk about the many individuals and families hit with the precarious reality of these economic conditions. And talk about this hitting home.........not just any home, but our home.

Reality revealed.

After 7 a-half-years of gainful employment, I found myself gainfully unemployed. I wasn't just reading the news, I became a part of the news. I am an individual contributor to the growing job loss statistics. I suppose I can characterize my situation where I have "fallen victim to the economic downturn". Or dramatize the circumstance where I have become "a casuality of uncertainties." I suppose any of those descriptions will do. I'll take one of each to go, please. And may I have fries with that?

Indeed, it is not a place where I prefer to be, but it is, nontheless, a place where I am. And that place does not have room to rent - for either "victim" or "casualty". And here is where this pivotal moment will determine how the next chapter of life will be written. Not by me, but by the author and finisher of me. The question is whether I will be yielded and fully surrendered to the Author's pen.

Challenges, difficulties, heartaches, struggles, tribulations.........they are not strangers to any of us. They come with the package. It's not a matter of if, but when. How we surface after being submerged in a sea of trials will reveal the depth of our character. And yet not our character solely, but in whom our character is built. As the Author lovingly strokes each letter and writes each word onto the pages of our lives, we may feel the pain of being pressed with each forming words, but we know that the temporary pain will produce the precious prose that only the Author can pen. And we can be assured knowing that the Author is forging in us; for us....."a future and a hope."