Left To God
Author: Cd Mohatta
God. Many of us at times, become very helpless about a problem and leave the work to God. Let God do whatever He wants now. I am out of this. I cannot do anything anymore. I leave this to God. This happens many times in our life when we feel helpless. Talk to a terminal cancer patient who has given up all the hopes, and you will hear only about God. Am I correct?
We also leave many others to God. Sometimes knowingly and many more times, without any knowledge. Let me elaborate. There is so much misery in the world, so much poverty and sickness. A majority of us have left these suffering people to God. Am I making sense? We make no effort to help. This is what I meant by saying unknowingly. We are not bad, but we are so overwhelmed with our own life and have become so immune to misery around us that we make no effort to help these people, but leave them to God. Some of us don’t take this attitude, but try and do whatever we can. Like Mother Teresa did. Such people become saints.
Now let us talk of something very cruel. How can leaving someone to God be cruel? This sounds contradictory. But this happens. Let us see how. A mother leaving her new born child on the street corner. Why? She never wanted the child. She does not know what to tell the world about the child. She has prestige to keep in society. She has her own problems. So what can she do? She leaves the helpless child to God. Oh, Lord, In all your mercy, please take care of my child. I leave my child to you. And she walks away acting as if nothing happened. How do you look at this?
Why did she sacrifice a newborn to her false sense of prestige? Why did she give society more importance than her helpless child? Why did she want to keep this facade of truth? Did she make God happy with her action? What do you call this. If this is not cruel, then what else is this?
Why did she not pray to God - Oh, God, I have this lovely child. I don’t know how to bring up this child. I don’t know what to tell my relatives about this child. I don’t know how to face many problems that will come while bringing up this child? Please help me. I cannot leave my child alone. I will bring up my child myself. Please help me. Please have your mercy on me?
Why don’t such people leave themselves to mercy of God? Why do they try to get up, try to earn, try to prepare food, and try to feed themselves? Why do they go to a doctor when they are sick? Why don’t they always say, God, I am sick, please take care. God, I am hungry. Please take care. They don’t. Because they don’t have total faith in Lord. The faith and surrender that makes them leave their every life issue to God is absent. But these same mothers leave someone totally helpless to the mercy of God. Such mothers are cruel and ruthless. God does not love them, but sends them to hell forever.
Many of us leave our beloved to God and walk out. Leaving behind a shattered life, we justify our action saying - I leave you to God. There is no bigger cruelty than leaving one’s beloved when they need one most. God never forgives such evil people.
A Look At South African Poverty!
Author: Sarah H
South Africa can boast of a mixture of several races and cultures due to its historical background. Several different population groups with different languages, cultural backgrounds and origins all reside in South Africa. If one were to measure human development by established standards such as life expectancy, infant mortality and adult illiteracy, South Africa would compare unfavorably with many other middle-income countries of the world. These indicators also vary widely by race group, gender and geographical location within the country.
Poverty can perhaps be defined as the inability to attain a minimal standard of living, measured against basic consumption needs or the income which is required to satisfy them. It is conventional to use a poverty line in order to reflect the monetary value of consumption which separates the poor from the non-poor. In the case of South Africa this can be defined by considering the poorest 40% of households (about 19 million people or just fewer than 50% of the population) as poor.
The majority of these poor people reside in rural areas. In fact although 50% of the population of South Africa is rural, the rural areas contain 72% of those members of the total population who are poor. The poverty rate, which is the proportion of people in a particular group or area falling below the poverty line, which actually measures how widespread poverty is for rural areas is, 71%. The poverty gap was about R28 billion in 1995, and 76% of this was accounted for by the rural areas.
When considering South Africa’s poverty it is necessary that prevailing accounting systems are investigated. In fact in many instances the national income of developing countries are not properly evaluated due to the fact that economic activity in these places takes place outside the recorded sector. Commonly dubbed as the informal sector, these activities are responsible for most economic activity in South Africa. Of course, it does not appear in the national income sheet because such transactions are unrecorded!
When considering South Africa’s poverty relative to the rest of the continent or perhaps even the western nations, it is easy to devalue the culture of African people. Many times when examining South Africa’s poverty people get caught up in the desolation of the nationals. It is important to recognize the output of its people in order to attempt to alleviate poverty for this nation.
Child Care - 10 Things You Should Expect
Author: Michael Russell
In this article we are going to discuss 10 things that you should definitely expect from a daycare center that is providing care for your child while you’re at work.
Child care centers are not clones. Each one will have different things available to the child depending on the budget the center has. Some will have many activities and others will have very few. But there are 10 things you should expect from any child care center no matter what their operating budget is.
1. Open Access To Their Center - Parents must be able to call on or walk in on a daycare center at any time unannounced. The provider should also allow the parent to make any amount of reasonable phone calls in order to check up on their child. The provider and the parent should work out a schedule for those phone calls to find out the times that are best and also agree on how many phone calls in a day are reasonable.
2. Safety For Your Child - The daycare center where your child is staying should be in a safe environment. All possible precautions should be taken to make sure that your child is safe such as, plugging electrical sockets, keeping knives and sharp objects in a safe place and out of reach, closing off stairways and using only safe and well maintained equipment. If your child has to travel, the provider should also use safety seats and seat belts when traveling.
3. Honesty And Confidence - Providers should not promise things that they can’t do. They should be honest about the care that will be given. Also, there should be confidentiality about your child even being there. Nobody should be given any information about your child if strangers should call unless you specifically say it’s okay.
4. Acceptance Of Parent’s Wishes - Centers should make every effort to comply with the wishes of the parents such as the food the child will eat, activities the child will or won’t participate in and any special care that needs to be given to the child. If the parents don’t want people smoking around their child then the environment should be kept smoke free.
5. Advance Notice Of Any Changes - The center should give the parents plenty of advance notice of any changes that are going to take place that may affect the care of the child. This way the parents can make plans to have the child moved to another center if they are not happy with the proposed changes.
6. No Interference In The Child’s Family - The child care provider should not talk to the child about any problems the parents may or may not be having. It is not for the child care provider to meddle in the lives of the family. The first and only responsibility is to care for the child.
7. No Advice Offered And No Judging Of Parenting Practices - If a child care provider does not agree with some of the parent’s methods of raising their child it is none of their business. They are only to offer advice if asked.
8. Assurance That Everyone In Contact With Child Is Trustworthy - If it is a large center and there are many people there then each one should be certified to be trustworthy and safe. A center should take all reasonable precautions when hiring staff and should provide the parents with information on how workers are hired and what screening process everyone goes through.
9. Open Communication - The provider should keep the parents constantly posted of any instances at the center that they should be aware of including the child’s progress or lack of progress. The parents should be kept in the loop regarding all activities the child participates in and those the child has problems with. It should be as if the parent is right there observing.
10. Finally, No Surprises - This means that the provider should not suddenly tell you that they have taken a part time job elsewhere and their teenage daughter will now watch the child. Or if at a center you don’t want to hear that your child’s teacher suddenly disappeared with no reason given.
If you are confident about all 10 of these items than more likely than not you have found a child care provider that you can feel confident in.
Foster Child Care and Adoption
Author: Uchegbu Ikenna
There are great differences between adoption and foster care. However the people hoping to adopt should know those significant differences and all that is entail in adoption. In adoption the couple who have adopted will become responsible for every thing that concerns the child until the child grows up, and when everything about adoption is completed, the child will be given the last name of the couples. To provide foster care to a child is not the same as adoption. Firstly the Childs last name will never be changed to the name of the person providing foster care to him or her, also a social worker must be involved at all times, to keep track of everything going on in the Childs life. It is also the social worker that will be providing information’s that is needed about the child in the foster care.
When some one is providing foster care to a child, the child may stay very long in a foster care, but he or she will not stay permanently there. There are times when the child will take from you when you are fully attached to the baby, and this may be very disheartening to you. However there may be option available for the child to be adopted at last. This may be a great opportunity to adopt that very child you have provided foster care for quite some time if you so desire.
Before this option of adopting the child under the foster care comes. The couple or single mother that is providing the foster care might have made up their mind that this is exactly what they wanted and that they are ready to be there for the child, if finally being adopted by the foster care provider, they cease from receiving financial support for providing the care to the child, The child therefore will be their responsibility from that moment.
When you are ready to move from being foster parents to adoptive parents, you will be sure that you have decided to make this type of commitment for the sake of the child that is involved and the whole family members. Although the road is not always easy, but the process can change the life of everybody involved for good. This may be the point in life time where you realize how important your role as an adopted parent is and the effect it will have on the child who is depending on you.
From the time of going through being a foster care provider to being an adoptive parent of this child, a lot could be learnt and this could be the opportunity for you to know the difference about adoption compared to foster care, as this will help in making the final decision on whether to choose to adopt the child under your foster care or not.