Heartbroken

This economic crisis is leaving me heartbroken. I am beginning to have good friends and family affected by it. What was the exception is becoming commonplace. My husband and I had a talk last night and what it boiled down to was, we would house friends or family if they needed it. The irony of it to me was instead of feeling overwhelmed about it or a little afraid of having people invade our home, I felt fulfilled by it. The idea of a crisis creating community at a new level makes me excited despite it coming from loss. And at the same time, I fear for the hard decisions friends and family will have to make or are making. It has reached a new level of reality when you see their struggles. I don't want them to be discouraged or fearful. I don't want them to walk through this. I want it to all get better just as they do. But in the last few days, I think I am beginning to wonder if we are in a 10 year recovery process. If things will get severely worse in 2009 to the point we have not seen since 1929. If friends and family (and us?) will be without jobs or homes or sharing homes and provisions for the next 3-5 years. Our generation hasn't even come close to seeing anything like this. Dad has 2-3 patients a day coming in and telling him about their job loss for the first time in 35 years. Our culture has created this bubble that gave us this false sense of security, and now it has broken. I wonder how our generation will recover. I don't worry so much about the financial damage - someday, our culture will recover from that. In the end, it's just money. But I wonder how we will recover emotionally and mentally. We weren't prepared. Most did not see it coming (and I'm not talking in specifics here, just our culture/generation in general). They believed the lies of the world that the money and opportunities would always be there. And now that is quickly disappearing or has disappeared, they are or will be devastated. We trusted in our culture to save us instead of God, and now we, like Israel, are going to have to trust in God to get through this.

Thankfully, he watches over us even more than the lilies of the field and the birds of the air....He gave manna from the sky to Israel....how much more will He provide for us. Our family is praying for all of you.