With growing unemployment and jobs hard to find for many, articles have appeared throughout the media reporting the economic hardships individuals and families are facing.

Several stories report highly qualified individuals with a long list of credentials and experience to back them up but still unable to find work. Under ordinary times, jobs would be easy for them to find. But not today, they despair.

My heart went out to a man I read about yesterday who figured he had the experience and knowledge to easily land another job when laid off several months ago. He wanted to work, was able to work, but couldn’t find a job, and he felt horribly guilty because of his predicament. He wrestled with the belief that it was his fault things were so tough.

We probably all know the feeling, “What did I do wrong that got me into such a mess!” we sigh, when events go severely against us.

Sometimes, we do need an honest examination of our attitude and motives and a major course correction. But other times, condemning our self is not the solution. Forgiving our self is the solution.

I think of several Bible stories where Jesus forgave someone and he or she was healed of a crippling disease or infirmity.

To the lame man on the couch, Jesus said, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” and the man got up and walked. Wow! Think about it. It was the man’s feeling of guilt that kept him hobbled on his bed for years. Jesus’ lifting of the guilt out of his thought instantly freed his mind and body to walk freely. In other words, the lameness was not the man’s fault and he needed to understand that truth.

Bringing the lesson to bear on our current economic times, for the average worker on the street minding his own business and working to care for his or her family, the recession is not your fault! You did not create it, make it happen, or think it up. It did not come out of your mind, and you don’t have to suffer from it. “Rise up and walk,” Christ instructs.

There are many lessons we all perhaps have to learn in demonstrating over the beliefs of shortage associated with recession, but one of them we can quickly embrace is to not feel guilty for a crime we never committed.

God gives each of us the resources we need to rise up and walk through the valley of limited belief, whatever form it takes, and come out on the other end well and strong. Steps to accepting these resources that meet human needs may require a firm proclamation of one’s innocence from wrong-doing to begin with.

You are innocent of having committed a recession.