Recession - 11^th November 2008

For anyone under 40, this is something that you probably haven’t experienced before. Those in their mid to late 30’s, known demographically as Thatcher’s children, will probably vaguely recall the mini recession of the early 90’s when interest rates ran at 15% and many house owners suffered from negative equity as house prices corrected themselves after the house price explosion of the late 1980’s.

The situation is different now – interest rates are much lower and the entire world has an economic downturn. No one has ever seen the bailouts that central banks have undertaken – usually recessions start from the bottom up, but this is a top down one where the major banks catch the cold first rather than last.

Is it the end? No! Various ‘harbingers of doom’ commentators will tell you that the end of the world is nigh and things will never be the same again. They are probably right about the second point. What it does do is create a negative environment with most people talking everything down. I read the Daily Mirror earlier today (not my choice of paper but it was there) and virtually everything was negative – it made me feel negative about everything by the time I had finished reading it (it didn’t take long!).

This isn’t the way God wants us to live – for a start, He is in control of our lives.  I find the whole business of doom and gloom rather oppressive, and many people seem to fall under its spell. Ok, so things aren’t great, but it comes back to yesterday’s point – does feeling negative and worrying about it assist in any way? – not at all.

The Bible isn’t particularly clear about whether Jesus had to endure a recession or not. There is little mention of Galilean hedge funds crashing or the sheckle exchange rate suffering due to poor exports. However, there were still tough times. Roman occupation probably wasn’t welcomed and created an oppressive environment. Herod tried to get rid of Jesus soon after he was born by having all first born children killed – not great.

What would Jesus do in this situation? I am pretty sure that he would get on with his life and try to bring the positives out of it – Jesus never struck me as a pessimist, more a realist with a positive twist. There is no evidence that blind optimism was his style either.

This is all food for thought and I am not seeking to radically change lives in less than a page. What I would encourage you to do is dwell on 2 things today – is it really that bad, and what about people who are worse off than me?

Give thanks, for everything that God has provided, and more importantly, will continue to provide.