charity

When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.

My request today is simple. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Find somebody, anybody, that__ different than you. Somebody that has made you feel ill-will or even hateful. Somebody whose life decisions have made you uncomfortable. Somebody who practices a different religion than you do. Somebody who has been lost to addiction. Somebody with a criminal past. Somebody who dresses __elow_ you. Somebody with disabilities. Somebody who lives an alternative lifestyle. Somebody without a home.Somebody that you, until now, would always avoid, always look down on, and always be disgusted by.Reach your arm out and put it around them.And then, tell them they__e all right. Tell them they have a friend. Tell them you love them.If you or I wanna make a change in this world, that__ where we__e gonna be able to do it. That__ where we__l start.Every. Single. Time.

It's frustrating when our best efforts to help people fail. But if we could see life through their weary eyes and experience their trials with the same frayed emotions, we might understand why.

With the best of intentions you toss me a lifeline. Failing to see how a piece of rope will do me any good, I ignore it and drown.

They" hate us because they feel--and "they" are not wrong--that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on. We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to

The great strength she had used in the old days to conquer and subdue, to win her will and to defend her way, seemed now a power but to protect the suffering and uphold the weak, and this she did, not alone in hovels but in the brilliant court and world of fashion, for there she found suffering and weakness also, all the more bitter and sorrowful since it dared not cry aloud.

We are oblivious to suffering. We are cheap with charity if it's not close to our home.

Lets reflect the hopes of the nations under oppression, injustice and brutality. All they see is Unknown suffering Of an empty heart and soul and thus their suffering is unknown. We cannot do everything; but still we can do something. Lend a hand to support the suffering ones.

People, most especially those who have known ease in this life, care more about being prospered than refined. It's always about what they can get from God, not what they can do for others, unless they can call attention to it for others to see.

Charity: begins at home and remains there. When it goes out, it's because it wants to brag about itself

You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself.Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self.Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy.Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself.Otherwise, cede your gavel.

The denial of assistance is sometimes the greatest assistance. The trick is recognizing when this is the case.

This much is true: When you are about to effect the lives of hundreds of people, Satan will do everything he can to prevent it from happening. Often pride and anger are his best assassins.

But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?""It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world--oh, woe is me!--and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!...I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!

If you always try to measure yourself withmoney... well, it's like counting backwards, the more youkeep on, the less you'll have to show for it.

Jews highly value having an abundance of money for the sake of caring for their families and for helping the needy.

For the case that one thinks he has plateaued in life, God has already set yet another peak for him to reach: and a much more challenging peak than his own, one that which is to serve others.

Whoever cannot survive without taking charity, such as an old, sick, or greatly suffering individual, but who stubbornly refuses to accept aid, is guilty of murdering himself_yet one who needs charity but postpones taking it and lives in deprivation so as to not trouble the community, shall live to provide for others." __abbi Joseph Karo (1488_1575), Shulkhan Arukh (The Code of Jewish Law), Yoreh Deah 255:2