Last November I blogged about some positive aspects of the Great Recession. My smile was a grimace, because my wife’s and my savings took a 33% haircut in the last year. I have prayed with some pretty desperate people who have been looking for work for many months. I have grieved with friends who have lost their homes or face bankruptcy. Our congregation is thrilled that our offerings have been flat—I feared that they would dive. With some deliberate underspending and positions left unfilled, we were able to balance our budget for fiscal 2008-2009. Wages were frozen, but we didn’t have to lay anyone off.
But along with this pain, there are some blessings in a down economy. Here are some for which I give thanks:
· Food prices have dropped. It grieved my heart in recent years to hear how poor nations struggled to feed their people when Americans were diverting so much corn into ethanol. As gasoline consumption dropped, more corn found its way back into the food market.
· It’s a great time to be hiring. Both the quality and quantity of resumes available for a given position gives H.R. people a lot more choices to bring a good person onboard. Our congregation recently hired an office person and we had a flood of resumes to consider.
· The idea of a job as an entitlement is fading. A job now is seen for what it truly is—a privilege to be respected.
· Americans will work longer before retiring. I know that may sound like bad news to most of you (lol) but seriously—Americans’ life expectancy has continued to creep upward, and somebody is going to have to pay for the longer (and often sicker) lives of all those senior citizens. We all need to suck it up and delay retirement a little.
· Americans’ savings rate has gone from -.5% two years ago to 7% today. Wow! What a turnaround. The recession has taught us to pay down short-term debt and delay gratification.
St. Paul wrote in Philippians that he had been both well-off and poor at different times in his life and had learned the secret of contentment in any and every situation. He learned to thank God for his treats and trust God for his wants. My view is that anything that leads us to thank God or trust God is good.
###
Straight talk. Real hope.
9/10/2009 - Posted by H
Thank you for seeing the silver lining. Does "All things work together for good..." apply here??
