"Done," she said.

My wife had spent hours fine-tuning her resume, answering personality and skill questionnaires, and poring over web pages to research the employer. This wasn't the first ministry position she'd applied to since graduating from seminary—far from it—but this job just seemed right. She pressed "send" and prayed that this might be the one.

After the first few weeks without a response, she emailed, called, even wrote a letter to the ministry—anything to provoke some sign of life. But she might as well have been signaling Mars. So she moved on. Six months later they finally sent an email, a single line of text: "Thank you for your application, but we've decided not to consider you for this position." I'm sure whoever sent this email thought they were being considerate, but to my wife, it felt like ripping the bandage off a healing wound.

This might be our guy! Rick thought, after perusing the 35th application in a ...