jenniferschwab - Recessions are Painful and Healthy

My buddy, Jeff Goins, recently wrote this post in his blog asking how the recession was affecting people. When I think about the recession and its affects, I keep coming back to a story that was never told.

There was this whole other plot point in the movie "Bruce Almighty" that got cut and never made it to the final version. It is available on the DVD in the extras.

It shows Bruce fulfilling different people's prayers. One of them was a woman who was down to her last dollar and didn't know how she was going to make it through the week. Bruce answers her prayer by giving her more money--a fortune actually. She is clearly happy and grateful.

But then God shows him what happened later. As a result, she became self-sufficient and independent from all friends and family. In the end, she was miserable, lonely, and severely depressed--even more depressed than when she had one dollar to her name. God points out that there was a purpose in her poverty. Without the miraculous money, she would have reconciled with her estranged sister, made amends with friends, and led a life rich with the company and love of those around her.

I think the recession that we're experiencing is like that. I feel hypocritical is some ways saying that. Andy and I have a roof over our heads and food to eat and enough work coming in to pay the bills, and it doesn't look like any of that will change. The pinches we're feeling are small.

But it is still truth. God doesn't create bad situations--we do. We, as a nation collectively, spent beyond our means for years. God didn't bring a recession upon us--we did that quite nicely ourselves. But God can use it to make us better people, a stronger community, and closer to him.

In the movie, God shows Bruce a picture of Lance Armstrong. Bruce responds by talking about Lance's success as a world-famous cyclist, and God comes back with one of my favorite movie lines of all time: "Triumph is born out of struggle...You want to paint pictures like this, you have to use some dark colors."

I don't think we've had enough dark colors as Americans. We have been blessed by wealth and abundance, and cursed with a spirit of independence and forgetfulness. It's painful to have to swallow our pride and ask for help from one another. It's painful to not be able to place our trust in ourselves. But it's healthy too.

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Recessions are Painful and Healthy

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