There’s no two ways about it. The situation is tough out there.
If current trends keep going the way they’re headed, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
But it will get better.
Because the only way to give meaning to suffering is faith in God, and God allows no evil that doesn’t ultimately beget greater good.
That might seem like cold comfort to the forgotten men who feel like they’re about to slip through the cracks.
But rest assured, God has not forgotten about you.
This poignant account from a close friend illustrates so well how hope can flourish even when life looks its darkest, that it gave me goosebumps.
Here’s the story:
My buddy is a Gen X-er. Over six months ago, he got laid off from the well-paying tech job he’d been hired for just over a year ago.
Since then, he’s sent out hundreds of resumés and gotten several interviews, all to no avail.
Before his employer unceremoniously canned him, my friend had bought tickets to a major pop culture convention. He’d already budgeted for a vacation, so he decided to follow through with his plans and go.
A ray of light seemed to shine through the gloom when, a few days before the trip, he got an interview for a job he was really hoping to get. He hit the road feeling pretty confident that he had it in the bag.
Then, no sooner did he arrive at his accommodations than he got a message from the company. They confirmed that he’d impressed them at the interview, but for no stated reason, they’d decided to go with another candidate.
Understandably bummed but undaunted, my friend decided not to let the bad news ruin his weekend. He headed to the convention, determined to have a great time.
Only for the event he’d been most excited about to get cancelled at the last minute. Then another to turned out to be a disappointment.
My friend took consolation in the fact that he’d set some money aside for some swag. So he proceeded to the dealers’ room in search of some discount books and games. His fortunes improved when he found an expansion for one of his favorite games. Even better, the same dealer had two deluxe art books: one Edgar Rice Burroughs and one Robert E. Howard, on offer.
But checking his remaining funds, my friend was again disappointed to find out he couldn’t justify getting both art books on his restricted budget.
It was then that he happened to hear about an open demo of the aforementioned game expansion being run by the lead designer.
So he hurried over to the publisher’s booth in the main hall to try it out.
During the game, another player mentioned that my friend looked a little down in the dumps. Eventually he drew the whole sad tale out of him. To my friend’s initial embarrassment, the other player called the game dev over.
“Tell him your story,” the other player said.
With some reluctance, my friend shared his troubles with the game designer. His response?
“I know where you’re coming from,” the game dev told my friend, “because I’ve been there. When you’re down, it’s easy to think you’ll never get back up again. But being in your situation was what led me to even bigger success in this career.”
My friend thanked the game designer for his words of encouragement. But as it turned out, that wasn’t all the guy gave him.
When that game ended, the developer handed demo duties off to an assistant. “Let’s head back to the dealer room,” he told my friend.
They went back to the publisher’s table in the dealers’ area, where my friend waited while the lead designer talked with the guy running the table. After a couple of minutes, the lead dev game returned with the ERB and the REH art books.
“I want you to have these,” he said.
My friend was speechless. No one had ever done anything like that for him before.
Not only did he get the books he’d wanted as a gift, he received a moment of illumination. Something else was going on in that dealer room that night, and it instilled my friend with new certainty that there was a plan. And even though he couldn’t see what it entailed or where it would lead him, he felt confident it would unfold for the best.
What my friend experienced is how a healthy, cohesive society should work.
And the moral of the story is that there are still enough of us out there who know you don’t leave a brother behind.
You’re gonna make it, bro.
We won’t let you slip through the cracks.
Because God wants what’s best for you, so how can we want any less?
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Great message. Despite the crushing alienation and atomization modernity is built on, you do always have someone in your corner rooting for you. The boys have always got your back, no matter how bleak it might seem.
Glad you found it uplifting. The truth of my own message was driven home to me today.
Apropos of nothing, I would like to apologize for the painfully ignorant and uncharitable things some Protestants can say about Catholic dogma – particularly Marian dogma – and the Church of Rome as a whole. (I’m not 100% convinced about the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption myself, but I can see where y’all are coming from on those points.) I’ve learned a lot about the Faith from Catholics like you and John Wright and grown as a Christian through spiritual disciplines I might once have considered “too catholic.” One of my wife’s cousins is on a bit of a tear on social media right now, so this is fresh on my mind. He might call me a heretic, too, for affirming the Blessed Virgin is Theotokos and not simply Christotokos.
On a lighter note, Happy Feast of the Transfiguration!
“he Church of Rome as a whole. ”
Can I politely request that you return the favor and call us the Catholic Church? I happen to be a Roman Catholic, of the Latin Rite and the specific church of Rome, the seat of the bishop of Rome. There however other liturgies and specific churches, around 6 or 7 and around 20 others, respectively.
Sometimes native sons will call us the “Roman Catholic Church”. Usually being cradled in the Roman Catholic church and aware of no other specific churches, they have some right to it. However, unfortunately, an absolute insistence on “Roman Catholic” from outsiders is sometimes about a deliberate unwillingness to acknowledge the name we give ourselves. Yes, we claim Peter and our current Peter lives in Vatican City, which is in the middle of Rome. However, the whole human institution is not a product of Rome, ancient or modern. The Catholic Church is a bold name to be sure, but it lives out there as the one we claim.
You certainly may. I’ll do my best to remember it. I do tend to forget there are Eastern Catholic churches which are in full communion with the Bishop of Rome but are not Latin.