To those in our community directly impacted by the recent wave of layoffs, we at the Center for Faithful Business offer our prayers and sympathies. Work impacts many other key areas of our personal and communal well-being. Our work allows us to contribute to our family, local community, and to the wider society in meaningful ways. The absence of work is deeply painful, and the ripple effects of being laid off are wide-reaching. But you are not alone.

“In a real sense all life is inter-related,” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote in a letter from a Birmingham jail. “All [persons] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” The loss of your work saddens our city, and it concerns us, as it must certainly sadden you. 

You are not alone. Directly or indirectly, we have all been impacted by the sudden loss of work. Many of us have received the unexpected news of layoffs, piercing our sense of security, stability, and even identify. Some of us have faced our work with the pangs of survivor’s guilt, as one close family member experienced following a recent series of cuts at his place of employment. We hope you have a community that is coming alongside and supporting you at this difficult time. If you are part of a faith community that is offering innovative, compassionate support, we’d like to hear about it. Please reach out to us at cfb@spu.edu and share how they are committing to your wellbeing during this transition.

Whether you are part of a faith community or not, we would like to remind you that you are created by a God who knows you by name, and who reminds you that you are beloved—not for anything you do or have done, but simply because you belong to God. We celebrate a God who delights in being with us, Emmanuel, and a Lord who sinks to the deepest depths to restore us to life. This is the accompanying God, who goes with us. “If I make my bed in the depths, you are there,” the psalmist writes. “Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day.” We are praying for you to be reminded when you need it most that what is most true about you is that you are beloved as a child of God, a that role cannot ever be taken away, and that you will be filled with resilient hope for the days ahead.

Wishing you abundant grace and peace,