A Reckoning

Dear LORD,

Wow.

Thank You for today. It's been a week now at Freddie Mac, and it feels like I've been away from the chapel, away from You, forever.

The new job is so much worse than I thought it would be, and I have few reasons to stay, besides the need for the money. The worst reason. 

But You put me there. To teach me what? Humility? Fortitude? Patience? Trust? Or are You teaching me to use my brain and to know when to run when I should? Or what?

Did you place @rmedia along my bus route home for a reason? What reason? Was it to humble me to show me "there but by Your Grace go I"? After all, James Bailey and I were in the exact same positions as software developers at SAIC 10 years ago, and now he's the president and cofounder of a successful multimillion dollar software VAR/content management company, and I'm struggling to make ends meet every day, every month, back to doing the same-ol', same-ol' as an hourly employee.

Or is this a beacon of hope for me? James did this, and all he had back then was an idea and the conviction to see it through. I have an idea, too, and I have friends, like James does, and I have conviction. Ten years from now I could be the president and cofounder of my own multibillion dollar start up financial company, instead of being another consumer, one of the many who simply work for these companies, instead of having them work for me.

I'm at a point now where I have questions with ready answers, but how to proceed from here, right now, today, yields vastly different futures with significant impacts on my day, starting today.

What do I do, LORD?

My life has lead me to this point — not to the point where I wanted to be, but to the point where I find You wanted me. Why?

Tomorrow is July 4th —American Independence Day — and I find myself sad for myself and my Country.  I feel we are more servile to tyranny today than we were when we threw off the yoke and declared our freedom from oppression. We have more liberties, more options, today than ever before, but instead of this abundance making us better, we have become slothful: libertines. I have this terribly sad fear that a reckoning is coming for my sins, but my daughters are going to be the ones to pay for them.

Please watch over them, the innocents, and me, the guilty, and our Country, and the World.

I ask this in the Name of Jesus, the Christ.

Amen.