faith and joy and the job search
At church, we're in the midst of another "Leap of Faith". It's kind of like a Lenten discipline for the non-aligned church set, but it also involves praying for big things for ourselves and the church—thus the name. I'm asking God, naturally, for a teaching job. Of course, when you lay it all out on the line and pray for big things you open yourself up to big disappointments, which is why the pastor preached yesterday on being happy with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Hedging our bets. Well, that and I guess the Holy Spirit is kind of important too.
The thrust of the sermon—and in fact all or this year's Leap of Faith—was that our relationship with God is more important than what God can do for us; and that, plus, God gives us all kinds of other gifts that we can take for granted or miss out on entirely. Like the Holy Spirit, and the joy we find in a beautiful day at the turn of the seasons (though I'll pass on using The Decemberists to illustrate that message). Sounds good to me!
Only that's kind of a problem. It was like preaching to the converted for me to hear that: I take a whole lot of joy in beautiful days, and rainy days, and all kinds of things. I am very aware of the gifts of God, and delighted with all that I get from God. It hasn't included a teaching job, but that's fine for everything except... our bank balance. So, maybe I should be praying harder.
I'm practicing interview questions in my head these days and so I'm feeling a whole lot more introspective than usual. One conclusion I've come to is that I'm not really very ambitious in any conventional sense, which I suppose shows on my résumé. Oops. On the other hand, everything that I do I want to do well: as well as it is possible to be done, in fact. Prospective employers should know, then, that I intend to win a teacher of the year award should I ever manage to be employed somewhere. Well, I'll win one if other folks notice and appreciate my ground-breakingly wonderful teaching, because I sure won't put myself in for any sort of awards or teach in ways designed to attract the attention of the prize committees (are there prize committees? there should be prize committees).
All that is to say that I really want a new job, I would do totally awesome at it, and if I don't get one I'll still be rejoicing in God's goodness. Is that lack of drive? If so, I'm afraid I'm guilty of lack of drive.