Lie To Me

I became unemployed back in December 2008 after being laid off from the hotel and after I submitted grades for the one history course I taught at Northern Kentucky University. I would have loved to teach enough classes to sustain a life, but I am unable to teach full-time at the university without a Ph.D. Nor am I able to teach at public schools since I lack my certification. Unfortunately, history is not in as much demand as science or math where one could hope to obtain an emergency certification.

I have always despised looking for a job and now I hate it more than ever. I detest job interviews for making me feel like I have to pretend to be somebody else while someone I have met for the first time is judging me. Subsequently, the employer drags out the agony while he or she takes two weeks to make up their mind. What is even more depressing is that now I cannot even obtain an interview. Now every hotel, bookstore, and coffee shop gives me the same cold response, “We’re not hiring right now.”

What I want is for them to at least recognize my effort by allowing me to fill out an application. Even if they’re not hiring, I would prefer they lie to me and allow me to pretend there is a chance a job may open up. Yet for them to instantly obliterate my hopes gets harder with each rejection. I have had some phone interviews with some charter schools, but those positions are months off and I needed a job yesterday. For now, I am doing my best to sustain my faith in the truth that, “whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”


CJE

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Reconciliation: Our Inevitable Destination

Keeping in mind the limitations of human institutions, today the country of my birth eradicated one of many enduring obstacles that aim to block the path towards our inevitable destination of reconciliation. Like rain in the desert, today quenched an eight-year thirst for those of us eager for truth and integrity. President Obama spoke powerfully the truth of integrity saying, “…As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals…” He understands correctly that we endanger our safety when we forsake our humanitarian ideals for the barbaric instruments of torture.

Yet more important than my eight-year thirst for change, today African-American citizens old and young witnessed a great harvest of seeds planted more than forty years ago. Non-violent civil rights activists planted those seeds by enduring the brutality of nightsticks and jail cells so they might cultivate the soil of their citizenship with the tools of the 1960s civil rights legislation. While researching my thesis I had the opportunity to meet one of those courageous seed planters, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Here was a man who survived the bombing of his home, the sting of bike chains and brass knuckles, while never allowing himself to succumb to hate.

Where do we go from here? For those who claim Christ, we must continue to temper our reliance on a fallen government. Though I believe this new administration will seek to implement Godly principles, it will not give itself fully to the will of God. Therefore, we cannot depend on Obama to bring us to our journey’s end, but rely on Christ alone. For it is Christ who makes possible the ministry of reconciliation that eliminates the barriers not only between God and man, but also tears down the walls between each other.

CJE

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