Pondering unemployment's most powerful God moments...

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's own or real life. The truth is of course that what one call the interruptions are precisely one's real life - the life God is sending one day by day." ~ C. S. Lewis

"God does not waste suffering; if he ploughs it is because He purposes a crop." ~  John Oswald Sanders

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." ~ G. K. Chesterton

"The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a
nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things." ~ Henry Ward Beecher

"...can you bear uncertainty? Can you bear not knowing how God is going to provide for your most urgent needs and still trust that he will? It is a question that Jesus wants all of his disciples to wrestle with. There are simply going to be times when we don't know where the provision is going to come from. Circumstances will look precarious, sometimes foreboding and threatening. Plans are going to fall through. If these things happened to Jesus, we should not be surprised when they happen to us....

Jesus does not want us to be governed by fear at such times. He wants us governed by faith. The reason is that the uncertainty is only apprent uncertainty. Our future and our provision and our ultimate triumph are certain to God. He has all the foreknowledge, power, resources, and desire to turn everything for good for those who love him and are called by him (Romans 8:28).

...uncertain seasons are usually the most powerful God moments we experience. They often put God on display more than other seasons...." ~ John Piper's newsletter, Can You Bear Uncertainty, April 2010

"Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people both now and forevermore." ~Psalm 125:1-2

"What does it mean to trust the Lord? It means looking to him as the source of our security and putting our faith in the grace, love, power, and protection of God when the inevitable pressures of life come. It means knowing as the psalmist did that the mountains surround Jerusalem, God himself surrounds and shields his people. When we trust the Lord...even though there are problems the size of mountains facing us, we can cry out to the Lord who created the mountains and is able to move them. As we focus on him and his truth, he will encourage our hearts and help us to claim the great promise of verse 2: The Lord will surround and protect his people, now and forever.

LORD, I put my trust in you today. You are my security and protection, my shield, my fortress, and my hiding place, and I praise you. When...troubles multiply, help me to remember that you are ever faithful and that you surround and protect me, both now and forever." ~ excerpted from One Year Book of Praying Through the Bible, quoted in God Daily Promises email 5/2/10.