Youth demonstrate in Kampala over the skyrocketing unemployment on several occasions. As politicians and state economists say, Uganda is currently banking on the budding oil sector to solve the economic puzzle.
When you’re told you’re special and God is going to use you in wild and world-changing ways—as I was repeatedly told during chapel for four years—you begin to believe it.
And when you’re told you’re special and then you can’t find a remotely normal job, you start to wonder just how special you really are.
You could be like me, successfully had my graduation – but then there was no job. Nothing happened for several months, despite my faithful completion of dozens of online applications and a well-groomed LinkedIn profile.
I spent hours wondering why I wasn’t doing anything with my life and why my University degree wasn’t getting me anywhere.
In Exodus 3, Moses leaves Egypt after murdering a man and endears himself to the Priest of Midian by watering his sheep; so much so, in fact, that Moses gets a wife out of the deal. Moses then, not surprisingly, takes up the family business of watching said sheep.
This being the same Moses who grew up in one of the most advanced ancient civilizations in history. His education was the present day Harvard version that we hear about, he grew up in a palace, and he apparently knew how to throw down because he murdered an Egyptian and scared some pushy shepherds away.
Moses graduated, and he ended up watching sheep. There’s no Biblical record of it, but I imagine Moses had a couple bad days, and I bet he occasionally thought man, this really sucks.
But then we read about Moses’ encounter with God in the desert, the wilderness of Sinai; the beginning of God’s great and tumultuous love story with the nation of Israel, and the start of one of the most fascinating interpersonal relationships in the Bible.
God didn’t come to Moses while he was powerful or remotely clean; the Lord who spoke matter out over the dark void chose a moment of insecurity and lack of direction in the life of Moses to end years of divine silence—to speak out through holy fire into the life of a man who had probably been told his whole life he was special, but now sat around with sheep.
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
After God promises repeatedly that things will work out, and that Aaron is going to help Moses, Moses eventually agrees to leave his barren wasteland for the fertile lands of the Nile—ripe for conflict.
Unemployment has taught me some difficult lessons. I know the penetrating insecurity of not finding work and wondering if I’m ever going to make use of this life I’ve been given.
My heart now has more compassion for people that don’t have jobs or that can’t seem to find something that fits. And I realized just how precious a thing direction is—that inward compass that says yes, this is why I’m alive. Not having that, even for only a short time, can cripple us.
Then there were the constant lessons about identity issues. Every time I got on Facebook or Twitter, I felt like everyone I knew was accelerating towards success, and I was moving around in my pajamas.
There were some awful moments when I was turned down for a job that didn’t even require a high school diploma. Those experiences, when stacked up like up cars in a wreck, can weigh down every part of our being. All the C.S. Lewis quotes in the world can’t make a person feel better on those days.
But there is something to be learned from those identity crises, a lesson that is freeing and life-changing: the realization that God loves us regardless of how successful we are or what we do for a living.
Moses crossed the desert, broken, leaving Egypt and everything he knew. God came to him in a bush, of all places, and told him to go back and change the world.
These are truths that can’t just be known, but must be endured. Some things are like that in life: we can’t understand until we become—we can’t truly know from a distance the crippling feeling of inadequacy that comes with repeated failures to find fulfilling work.
Nor can we experience the overwhelming peace from knowing that God is writing a story in our lives that is bigger and more glorious than our professions or our degrees.
So while unemployment is undeniably awkward and overwhelming, do not feel the time in the desert is lost. For the Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it—even the wastelands.
That said, let me make some random talk, in your joblessness, let your emotions out – if you’re like me (human), you’ll have an emotional firestorm inside you at some point – talk to someone about it.
Fight the depression; get a vice grip on God – cling to those promises, grasp his cloak, hold on to Jesus so tightly that you would crush a mortal man’s flesh.
Network – try to network with people who may help you get a job. If you’re in engineering, find an engineer. If you’re in teaching, find a teacher. Get creative.
Keep on giving. There’s one budget you should never cut, and that’s giving. Remember the widow in Luke 21: 1-4?
Contribution by Brian Livingstone.
