What Color Is Your Parachute 2018 by Richard N. Bolles copy

Well, then, what does God do? To what larger conception of
God might we press? Let’s try this: imagine that you have, in
your dining room, a fine wooden chair, which one day has its
back broken off completely—I mean, into smithereens—by a
guest in your home. You run down the street, to summon a
carpenter who lives nearby. He comes and examines the chair.
He pronounces the back unrepairable. “But,” he says, “I think I
could make a fine wooden stool out of the remainder of the
chair, for you.” And so he spends much time, shaping, polishing,
and sanding it, and fashioning out of the former chair a fine
stool, more resplendent than anything you have ever dreamed.
He inlays it with precious metals, and soon it is the treasure of
your house.
This is, of course, a parable. And I know you understand it.
But let me underline a couple of key points in it. First of all, the
carpenter did not break the chair. Your houseguest did that. But
the carpenter came quickly, and with all his art and powers he
tried, first of all, to see if he could repair it. Finding it was too
late for that, he determined to make of it something even finer
than it had been before. And, he labored mightily, to that end. A
beautiful stool was the result.
A faith that thinks God is responsible for our unemployment,
and He could have and should have prevented it, needs to grow
up. It is too small a faith. It has too small a God.
While we are out of work, we can reach toward a larger
conception of our God and of ourselves. For, “to believe in God”
has the power to lift us out of depression, unless our God is too
small.
We can, realize that religion isn’t necessarily a blessing.
Much depends on whether it is healthy religion, or unhealthy
religion. Your choice. Here is the distinction between them: