Tony Silva
We could see God’s provision already. Christmas came and went and at a time of the year when we would have been totally depleted, we still had a little money left for groceries, thanks to our adult son’s generous holiday gift. I would receive a final paycheck and a payout of remaining vacation days from my former employer. As I saw it, our faith had not been seriously challenged yet; the worst was still to come.

Unemployment Insurance can take the edge off of one’s financial burden while he’s looking for a new job. I didn’t think I would qualify, but it would be irresponsible not to apply for benefits; that’s how one gets help finding work in our state. I signed up online and got a confirmation that my application had been approved pending an “adjudication” of my termination. At least I had the advantage now of being able to search nationwide for a job that met my qualifications. In addition to feeding my resumes to plumb companies in the Pacific Northwest, I began searching government databases, the Workforce Development databases, and of course, the top online job sites for instructional designers. At this point, I had to seek work wherever it could be found and for whatever it would pay.

It didn’t take long to run afoul of the bureaucracy when I checked a box wrong on the online form. It could not be corrected online, so I had to go to the local Workforce Development office to have my careless mistake fixed. What I found there was almost an alien culture. The office was crowded with people seeking help, most of whom seemed like they had been out of work for some time. The office was well worn, though it looked like the staff made a faint effort at keeping it clean. Employees barked instructions to weary benefits-seekers, pointing to workstations where they could do a job search or to the appropriate lines to stand in to have a question answered or a form stamped.

When the Workforce Development people concluded their “adjudication” process, they found that I had been discharged without just cause. Even though we are in an “at-will” state and workers remain on the job at the pleasure of their employers, unemployment insurance is available to employees who are unjustly discharged. While I was grateful for the helping hand, it was an unexpected blessing. Others in the crowded office viewed it as an entitlement – almost as something they had earned.

As the day wore on and I had a chance to talk with people, one thing became clear to me: there are many people in this country who depend almost entirely on the government for their security. Whether the temporary security of unemployment insurance or the near-permanent security of welfare, we are content to live our lives as though nothing could go wrong because there is a “safety net” to catch us during rough times. Nobody wants to confront this issue directly through savings or through church and family as not everyone has access to a strong church or a financially stable family. Certainly there probably weren’t a lot of people in this office who had saved for just such a situation.

So who did I depend on in my case? Was it hypocritical to say, “The Lord will provide” and then make my way to the nearest government office when things got rough? Perhaps it was. As I reflected on this in the months that followed, I began to see that who you depend on is a matter of the heart. I visited the Unemployment Office with no expectation that I would be eligible for benefits. As others gave anonymously to our needs, and as mission food became a daily staple of our diet, the answer for me was unmistakable. The Lord had provided mightily, and a part of His provision could well have been the finding of an unjust termination that made me eligible for benefits.

One of the visitors that day emphasized that the Unemployment Insurance benefits were his money and that the government and his employer were conspiring to delay payments. “If I owed back taxes, I bet it wouldn’t take three weeks for them to get it from me,” he complained. Even if his assumptions weren’t accurate, they spoke volumes about where his faith lay. Somehow, I knew that if this was not the place of God’s provision, that I would find it. After all, it is He who I depend on, and I would keep looking until I found the place He wanted me to be.
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