Disquieted

 I find myself disquieted.

I sit here looking out the front window as the cold front that apparently heralds our arrival of Winter makes itself known:  rain, wind, and dropping temperatures for which are temporary, but will definitely settle downward overall even further.  The washing machine runs in the background, washing two weeks worth of guinea pig blankets that need a good hot wash and two rinses.  The coffee - from the second pot this morning - is still warm.

All of this feels real - and yet, all of it feels like an illusion.  It is moments like this that make me remember what a thin veneer of stability makes our whole society and what I often take for granted as my lifestyle run.

Certainly reading the news will not help anyone's frame of mind - which is why by and large I have stopped doing it.  I drop in occasionally only to find that pretty much nothing has changed - in fact, things genuinely seem to be going from bad to worse.  

I go through a list - is it job security and employment I am worried about?  Of course always - at best what the industry I am in is unstable at best and start-ups are even more so.  We are going through the budgeting activities for next year and although I am planning as if I had a full year and lots of growth to plan for, at the back of my head I am painfully aware of the fact that if something significant does not change in the next four to six months, this will be a very different discussion indeed.  

We have scrubbed the budget - again - and will probably do so one more time .  No matter how much I think we have redirected funds, likely there is always something more.  And yet at the same time, there not all the saving in the world can make job instability not happen.  

(It looks like my hours are up slightly at Produce (A)Isle to 17 hours a week or so.  Given those hours on top of a regular job, not sure there is a lot else I can do there - even I need some down time.)

Add to this the message that seems to be coming through loudly from the sermons I have heard over the last two weeks from Thessalonians with the effective message being about persecution.  It is as if someone is trying to get a message through or something.

Sure, I have been here before. This is not the first time that the world has been unsteady or my job has been in long term doubt or persecution has come up in a sermon series.  But the question that keeps popping up in my head is that even if all of this is nothing more than another swell in the ocean of history, what do things look like after it?  Things never "go back" to the way they were before.  They are either changed or seem the same but find themselves more fragile.

I should not be disquieted about things I have seen before - and yet, I am.