The Poor of the Land and the Pride of Jacob :: Desiring God Christian Resource Library
Shared via AddThis
August 1, 2009
July 31, 2009
LAND YOUR DREAM JOB - THROUGH NETWORKING SITES AND TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN JOB PORTALS
Ever thought of logging on to a social networking website to find a job? These sites have become a huge hit with job seekers in
At a time when recession has hit people hard, social networking sites like Apnacircle.com, Linkedin.com, ibibo.com and Facebook are giving a tough competition to job portals.
ApnaCircle.com, a career-cum-social networking site, generates over five million page reviews in a month and have about half a million registered users on their websites, which was launched in the year 2006 in India.
Likewise in the US
Another advantage of this unique site www.clearmybench is that it not only fetches jobs from Major Sites, it also provides opportunity to Post jobs, Post Resumes, Post Hot Lists, Post Classifieds, Recruiter/Job Seeker Networking, Career Forums, Blogs and More. To avoid annoying log-ins, Clear My Bench users do not have to register to view content and above all www.clearmybench is a FREE Service.
I got a reference about a job opening through my friend on one of these sites. I checked the site and applied for the job. After an interview, I was finally placed with 3G Soft Solutions,' said an overjoyed Timothy Haggins.
For many software engineers listing a profile on these websites is like giving a classified advertisement in a newspaper. Through sites such as these, one gets to network with different people from different personal and professional spaces that can be useful in building contacts and getting us the desired jobs. As soon as the profile appears on the site, one gets a SMS and sometimes the sites themselves offer jobs. Another benefit of these sites is that many employers often visit various career oriented groups and communities on these sites to hunt for the right employee.
Websites like www.clearmybench provide the opportunity to build up a professional network, where prospective employers and employees come to network, connect and build relevant contacts. Various job openings are also listed in a section from where you can look out for job opportunities.
Agreeing that these websites act as an added benefit for job seekers, Shipra D E., a freelance writer, said she got her dream job after she posted 'looking for a job' status on her profile on one of these websites.
'I posted my current resume and added the status messages as 'looking for a job'. In response to this, I got e-mails and posts from interested employers, friends on my list and friends of friends,' said 24-year-old Shipra who is freelancing for a firm.
She said these sites also offer a unique opportunity as there are communities that one can visit to befriend those working in a company that one wants to join.
'People log on to communities and groups of various companies on these sites. So it is easy to make friends with them and it is also good to build one's contact for the future,' she added.
For students like Archana Bharadwaj, the future looks a bit brighter. 'Even though I am a student still, I network on such sites so that I can start building contacts from now itself,' said Richard, who is a third year student of computer science engineering.
I make it a point to add people employed with top software firms and, who knows, I may get a call from Microsoft,' he said. Earlier people used to run from pillar to post to build contacts, but now it is possible at just the click of a mouse.
That’s the Combination of the Power of Technology and Networking.
July 30, 2009
THE ANTISOCIAL INCLINATIONS OF SOCIAL NETWORKS
What happened to the clamor for interoperability among social networks? In the past year, the social networks have dropped their ambitious plans for integrating user logons and updates, and users apparently are fine with that. A change in social networking culture has led people to use different networks in different ways, and there’s far less interest in READ ON FOR MORE
July 29, 2009
Tomorrow's Job Market
There are three main areas of growth predicted for tomorrow’s job market: education, health care and the sciences. Luckily for our daughters, education and health care are already traditional choices for women. The sciences are a different.... Click For more...
Future trends in technology employment
These are the trends in technology employment and innovation, security, the software industry and IT governance, spinning out to 2010. Even though some IT jobs will continue to move overseas by 2010, the United States will still have a sizable population of IT professionals doing high-level work on ..............Read on for more...
July 28, 2009
July 27, 2009
Outsourcing has fallen on hard times, just like almost every other sector of the global economy. However, that’s because so many companies must take drastic cost-cutting measures, not because outsourcing has READ ON FOR MORE
THE BIZARRE BEHAVIOUR OF STEVE BALLMER
MICROSOFTS EVANGELIST : THE BIZARRE BEHAVIOUR OF STEVE BALLMER
Is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer completely nuts? Or is his bouncing buffoonery just calculated to boost the hype around Microsoft’s products? The question has stumped the technology world for two decades and, even a year after he assumed the head honcho role from Bill Gates, Ballmer’s raving, and sweaty, off-the-cuff on-stage antics show.........READ ON FOR MORE.......
July 17, 2009
IE 6 Must Die for the Web to Move On
IE 6 Must Die for the Web to Move On
Just six years ago, the web was dominated by one browser: Internet Explorer , specifically Internet Explorer 6. Without Netscape to compete against it and the ability to bundle its browser with Windows XP, Microsoft experienced superior market share – up to 95% at ............ READ ON FOR MORE
Music industry v Technology
Music industry v Technology
Ring tones - sometimes they are funny, sometimes entertaining, sometimes rude and, yes, sometimes they are just plain annoying. Ring tones are a multi-billion dollar industry and everyone from Madonna to Charlie Parker and ............
July 16, 2009
April 23, 2009
a lifetime vision of a man with a Mission
The Church of the Poor is a lifetime vision of a single man with a Mission : " To eradicate Poverty and build a basis on Social Justice for all by meeting the needs of the whole person – body and spirit ".. He believes that true vision of Christian charity is one that embraces the whole human person, physical and spiritual. He reiterates that what prophet Isaiah says, “When we spend ourselves on behalf of the poor, our healing comes and our light begins to shine.” This is what we’re made for: We’re made to live for something bigger than ourselves; we’re made to give ourselves for others. When Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, "Give to whoever asks from you," it’s in the context of His teaching on enemy love. Jesus is saying that the way the world works, the poor become our enemies, but we’re invited into relationship so that we can discover a new community. charity is always condescending to the poor, a handout never feels good, nobody wants to be in that position, but telling the truth about the divisions and gaps between us and doing what we can to love one another across those divides is taking steps toward becoming the family of God that Jesus says we already are.
After painstaking research and development, he embarked upon this noble venture to see that Social justice reaches the most deserving. Having worked for leading Multinational NGOs and development Agencies, he has the rich expertise of working at the front end andtackling the most challenging decisions involving Development andAid in todays World. He strongly believes that Christ lives and is actively present in the poor and needy people.Lets once again ponder over the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man created this gated life, this gated neighborhood, kept the world out and locked himself in. And what he finds is that he not only locked the poor out of his life, but he’s locked himself into a life that’s incredibly narcissistic and robs him of love and community. It's also not just a separation between himself and Lazarus, but it becomes a separation between himself and God. He’s certainly a religious man, he knows the prophets, he calls out to Father Abraham and yet God says, "This person suffered just outside your gate and you received everything in this world that you needed." And of course the story ends with the flipping of everything to where the rich man is begging the beggar for a drop of water.
It’s a hard parable, but the rich man ended up there not just because he’s rich but because he didn’t care and he didn’t love and he didn’t connect with his neighbor. That’s the invitation that we all have. It means that we’ve got to bust through the gates or the picket fences or the walls that we build up between nations and we’ve got to find the alien and the immigrant, the stranger, the hurting, the homeless and learn their names. And incidentally, Lazarus is the only person named in the parables of Jesus and it means "the one God rescues" or "the one God hurts." We have to be the folks that hear those cries and humanize those people who’ve just been locked outside.
Poverty is a concept that refers to "pronounced deprivation in well being."(1) In simple terms, to be poor is to be hungry, homeless, sick, illiterate, voiceless, powerless and generally unprotected from adverse and potentially oppressive and unjust social realities. Poverty is a global problem of huge proportions with explosive social consequences for peace and stability. According to the World Bank, of the world's 6 billion people, 2.8 billion live on less than $2 a day, and 1.2 billion on less than $1 a day(2). Generally, wealth and poverty are asymmetrical social realities that reflect unjust distribution of material resources, knowledge and power in local and worldwide scale. Our cheerful compassion and giving must be grounded upon belief that “in nothing do we draw so close to God as in doing good to man." Jesus Christ in his teaching ministry had juxtaposed, as it can be found in Matthew 22:39 and Mark 12:31, the demand of loving God with all one's heart (Deut. 6:5) with the command to love one's neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:18). By placing these two commands in immediate juxtaposition, Jesus asks us to understand each in light of the other. This is a consistent trend in the gospels and even in St. Paul who writes to Galatians: "Through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Gal 5:13-14). The ways we love our neighbor reveal the authenticity of our faith in God, in the most concrete terms.He wants to remind the rich that they must recognize the true identity of the poor and acknowledge their special dignity and role in Christian community. By this we know love that he laid his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and in truth (1 John 3:16-18). In the book of Proverbs we find the remarkable assertion, "He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him to his deeds" (19:17). The people of God, in Ecclesiastes, are expected to share their possessions with the poor through almsgiving. God rewards and blesses those who practice almsgiving (17:22; 7:32). It provides the best security for life (40:24); it endures forever (40:17), for it is an act of worship to God: "He who gives alms offers thank-offering" (35:2). Faith demands an active love towards the poor and the needy (James 2:15-17). The underlying assumption for this active concern for those who are suffering is the belief that all people created by God constitute an inextricable unity and salvation depends on whether we "love and show humanity" to the suffering brethren. For we are all one in the Lord, rich and poor, bond or free, sound or sick; and one is the Head of all, He from Whom are all things, namely Christ. And what our members, are to each other, this each one of us is to the other, and to all… We should fix in our minds the thought that the salvation of our bodies and souls depend on this: that we should love and show humanity to the these (the suffering poor).
Why don't we think about poverty, welfare, and the best way to help the poor?Let us promote the attempts by various celebrities such as Bono to relieve poverty, and like Live Aid or the One Campaign. Churches and other religious groups must effectively combat world poverty, this is not something only governments can tackle.It seems a genuine role can be played by religious aid bodies. Instead of giving away handouts, we must have programs that offer loans to individuals and small businesses in poor countries. We desperately need experts in micro credit and micro financing, and prove a good illustration of the maxim that it is better to teach a man to fish than simply to give him a fish.Jordan Ballor of the Acton Institute in the US argues that Christians should reconsider how much they rely on governments to fight poverty. Indeed, he suggests that Christians should not be so reliant on governments for doing what churches have always historically done. Says Ballor,“One of the most common refrains from Christian leaders calling various governments to action - whether those of Canada, the U.S., or other member states of the United Nations - is that governments are the only entities capable of providing the level of material assistance that is needed. In the words of a speaker to a denominational assembly, ‘Civil society is never enough.’ The message is that churches can never hope to match sums like the $40 billion the G8 has proposed to cut debt among some African nations.”But is this the case? Are churches so poor? “This attitude simply does not give Christians enough credit, both for what they have done and what they might do if challenged. In the U.S. alone in 2004, private individuals and corporations gave a record $249 billion to charity, with religious organizations as the single largest recipient group at $88 billion.”This is more than double the debt-relief offered by the G8, and this is reached even though Christians as a group do not give nearly at a level in accord with the biblical principle of the tithe. The Barna Group reports that only 6% of American Christians gave 10 percent of their income to churches or para church organizations in 2004. the possibilities are endless if Christian leaders spent more time admonishing the members of their flock to meet their biblical responsibilities.And believers should prefer faith-based initiatives over secular government programs for several reasons. First, one can ask how effective government poverty relief measures are, especially in terms of foreign aid. As Lord Peter Bauer liked to remark, most foreign aid programs consist of poor people in rich countries giving money to rich leaders in poor countries.Indeed, biblical aid work must take the whole person into account: “So why are Christians so eager to endorse what is at best a half-measure? Jesus showed us the relative priority of the spiritual over the physical when he asked, ‘What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?’ (Mark 6:36 NIV).”“Some kinds of Christian charity have been making this error for decades. The National Council of Churches (NCC) ignores the fact that acts of Christian mercy must always be done with a view toward the spiritual welfare of the recipient, as it continually engages in relief efforts while explicitly condemning ‘proselytizing.’ But what the NCC calls proselytizing, other Christians call evangelism. Is not the “cup of water” to be given in Jesus’ name? (Mark 9:41).
Think about it!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
