Embracing the Desert: The Gifts of Unemployment

Practical steps through the desert

Although the fear and vulnerability of job loss can make us feel distant from God, we can take some very real practical steps while we are in this difficult—yet privileged—place. This is how we respond to the desert’s call to conversion.

The first practical step is to use our newfound time well. It is tempting to let our lives fall into the shapelessness a lack of external constraints can allow. If we don’t have to go to work, why bother to get up at an early hour? Our extra time can be a curse or a blessing, depending on how we use it. If we waste it, we squander this precious gift we “never had enough of” while we worked. Rather, we are called to use our time well: we can spend more time with friends or family, read more, or resume some long-ago discarded project around the house. So often we are like the ancient Israelites; we long so much for the slavery we no longer have that we fail to see the gifts our new freedom has given us.

A second practical spiritual step is living in the present moment. The shortest path to an unhappy life is the road between what we are doing to where our hearts are. If we do one thing but our hearts are somewhere else, we will surely miss God in that moment. While the desert is a privileged place to encounter God, the present moment is the only place we can do so.

One of the difficult byproducts of looking for a job is feeling guilty for every moment we are not looking. But this, too, is a waste of the gift of the desert. Of course, we must spend time looking for our next job, but no matter how much we want a job right now, we cannot job-hunt 24/7. We should remember, “We do what we can do when we can do it. We do what we are doing when we are doing it.” We are called to concentrate on the gift of what we are doing right now. If we are actively searching for a job, then we should focus on that. But when the time for job-hunting has passed for the day, we can spend time relaxing alone or with family or friends.

A final gift of the desert experience of job loss or job search might be an awakening of our desire to pray. Few things make sustained prayer more difficult than a long spell of getting everything we want. In this new place where danger seems to lurk all around, we are more naturally drawn to ask God’s help. One common characteristic of the desert experiences in Scripture is that no one left without talking—and listening—to God. If all our own deserts do is reaquaint us with our need for—and the gift of—talking and listening to our God, then they have given us a great gift indeed.

What the Scriptures say over and over again, then, is that God is not just present in the desert but that God is especially powerful in that uncertain and vulnerable place. Cannot that be true for us as well? In the vulnerability of the job search, we might understandably long for our former security; but without insecurity, we would not be called upon to trust more deeply in God’s care for us. In our comfort, we can more easily live in the illusion we provide for ourselves that we are the sole authors, architects, and builders of our lives. Now in this place of danger and fear, we can see more clearly that while we participate in our destiny, we are not its author or even its most important actor. We do not have as much control as we had imagined, and that realization in itself can lead to gratitude and a deeper trust, however long our journey through the desert lasts.

Father Jeff Vomund has been a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis since 1997. Since 2006, he has been pastor of St. Elizabeth, Mother of John the Baptist Catholic Church and St. Louis Catholic Academy elementary school.