January 8, 2014. I will never forget that date. It happened. I was caught by surprise. Stunned might be a better word. As I left the room I wondered only one thing – how would I tell my wife…
Termination is a difficult place for any man. In a society where we are defined by what we do, the first question men ask each other is, “What do you do for a living?” It shapes our impression of each other and alludes to our status in society. It is the common banter that we all engage in. And for me, it will now have attached to it the stigma of having lost my defining label.
The challenge of unemployment after being let go is not finding a new job. It is overcoming the mental difficulties that come with losing the job in the first place. My father always said, “It is easier to find a job when you have a job.” Yet, he never prepared me for finding a job when you lost a job. Questions of self-worth and personal value loom heavy in your mind. You struggle with the reality that there is actually someone that you have worked for who is no longer willing to pay for the expertise that you bring. Beneath all of that are all of the why questions: Why me? Why now? Why not someone else? With this blow to my male psyche comes the looming loss of significance. I feel like a man with no identify.
Elijah the Tishbite was a nobody. We hear nothing of him prior to his introduction and know nothing of his walk with God. Yet, in 1 Kings 17 we are introduced to him and he is given the charge to tell Ahab that there would be no rain in Israel. Fleeing from the presence of the potentate, he is instructed by the LORD to go to the Kerith Ravine east of the Jordan where he is told that he would drink from the brook and that ravens would bring him food.
So he did what the LORD told him (1 Kings 17:5).
Obedience is an amazing thing. In the midst of all of life’s challenges obedience is vital, even if it does not make sense. Ravens bringing food? Really? It had never been done before. What’s more, they were considered unclean, most likely due to the fact that they are scavengers. Yet, if you want to survive you must believe that God is able to do the impossible and be willing to follow the improbable…
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Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land (1 Kings 17:7).
It ran dry. Wasn’t this the divine provision that resulted from obedience? Wasn’t this the means whereby he knew he was where God wanted him to be? After all, he was told to go to this place and that he would be supplied by this stream. Yet, the brook ran dry.
My unemployment parallels this reality. Leaving my place of comfort I have gone to a distant land and there fed off that which God sent daily through His other servants. He has allowed me to drink from the life giving waters of the nearby brook and has sustained me with food I did not gather. Yet, I now sit on the other side of “some time later” and my brook has dried up. I too was caught by surprise, having set my future plans based upon it being there tomorrow, only to find that has dried up. I was depending upon its life giving refreshment to sustain me, taking for granted it would be there. Yet, it is gone. And with it, my plans for tomorrow. What lessons can I take away from this?
As I thought of this story and my circumstances what has loomed in my mind is why the brook dried up – because there had been no rain. The rain stopped months, maybe even years ago. Yet, the brook dried up this day. When the rain stopped, gone was the source of the brook’s physical sustenance. With the cessation of the rain came the inevitable drying up of the brook. The question never was will it run dry but when. He and I had been living on borrowed time. We had been depending upon something that was not dependable to keep us in the midst of difficult times. We trusted something that could not be trusted. We had gotten comfortable in earthly provisions even though they, like the grass, soon wither.
There is a very real lesson for me…