Hope and Money

Money is a dreadfully important thing.

I remember being broke after college, and every time I couldn’t afford groceries, or I froze in my house while I couldn’t pay for heat, or I put my car repairs on my credit card because I didn’t have any money for dire necessity repairs, I told myself, “It won’t be like this for long.”

You know….”Someday” will happen. I will get a better paying job. I will pay off one or two of my loans and I will have a little more leeway. Nothing will go disastrously wrong for another 6 months and I will get some savings. I will get a successful part-time job that won’t work me too hard. Someday I will have some fiscal security.

Then, nothing goes wrong and everything goes wrong. You realize that no matter how hard you work, your job will still be dead-end. Cost of living will go up faster than any possible raises. If you have an old car, it will break faster than your ability to pay for repairs, if you have a new car, the payments slowly bleed you dry. You have to go to the doctor. You have to go to the dentist and he finds $7000 dollars worth of repairs. You need glasses. You need to buy a good pair of running shoes. Utilities go up. Groceries go up. The payments for your loans go up and you realize at the minimum payments that the term is 30 years. You realize that you can’t afford to pay for education to get a better paying job. Job market tightens up and part-time jobs are more demanding and more rare than you had previously imagined.

God still provides. You have food and shelter and clothes, but you very carefully watch your money as it slowly spirals deeper and deeper and for the life of you you can’t imagine what you can use to possibly cut costs.

Now, naturally the answer to the question is “trust God.” God will solve the huge, financial, maelstrom in some way at some time. If you consult the American dream (or curse) than it will tell you if you work hard enough you will find a way and break through. But then, I can do math, and I read Grapes of Wrath. Those people had endless amounts of work, drive, and hope, and they never came to a homeplace. And the math tells me I will never make it out of debt without a significant change in pay.

Hope is a chancy thing. On the plus side, God promised to provide for me, but then, he only promised to provide your necessities. That he has done, even abundantly, but I write the checks every month, and I feel the weight of debt and lack of scope for vocational growth more and more every month. And I ask myself, what am I hoping for? I didn’t sign on for an easy ride when I became a Christian. And debt is an easier burden than martyrdom. But, debt is a loooooooooong burden. What do you pray for when you bereft on a sea of not so imminent yet always present financial issues? What do you cultivate hope in when you are perpetually broke with no way to go forward that you can see no matter how hard you work, or how many avenues you explore?

That may have been a very disorganized and not very enlightening post.