When the apostles went with another candidate
While the apostles welcome Matthias into his new role, I want to sit with Barsabbas, the one who was rejected.
I was having coffee with a friend, discussing the strange ritual of applying to jobs online. She has been looking for a teaching position with a livable salary; I am hoping to transition away from overnight shifts as a hospital chaplain. The job search involves daily rejection. As so many of us seek meaningful work to no avail, there's a cumulative toll to not being chosen.
For both my friend and me, the process has been difficult. It is not easy to receive a response from prospective employers. Sometimes, after uploading her resume and cover letter, my friend cannot bring herself to hit the submit icon. “Sometimes, I have to ask my husband to do it for me,” she said. “I simply can't!”
As I headed home, I began to think about our underlying fears. In one sense, a resume serves as a snapshot of our aspirations and investments, our struggles and commitments. It is a history of our longings and our places, our people and our hopes. It is one way of understanding the past and orienting ourselves toward an imagined future. Crafting a resume is an exercise in vulnerability. In applying for jobs, we send vulnerable, cherished, hard-won parts of ourselves out into the world. We do not know if these parts of ourselves will be received with care.
