a Christian job search network
Aug. 23rd, 2002 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serenissima[reposted from DiaryLand]
I was missing Chris a lot when I went to bed last night, and again when I woke up. It's not so bad during the day when I have distractions, other things to think about, but when I'm trying to sleep he's on my mind. Sometimes the knowledge that we're months away from seeing each other hurts intensely. This morning I woke up around 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep, as occasionally happens. I think my father started jogging on the treadmill downstairs at 6 AM. I could just make out the strains of Star Wars music he was playing, and the effort of trying to figure out what I was hearing brought me to full alertness. At 20 after, I decided I might as well get up.
I started to take a walk around the neighborhood, but then I remembered that that JobSeekers group meets Friday mornings -- at 7:30 AM. So I headed over to the Fuddruckers where they meet. It turned out to be a Christian fellowship group. There were a couple of little devotional talks to tell us about how we need to place our trust in God to guide us to where we're meant to be, followed by people introducing themselves and naming the type of work they wanted, and people announcing job leads they'd found. The group was largely men and almost entirely middle aged; there was one other recent college graduate who happened to be female. I don't know if I'll go back; I didn't feel entirely comfortable, but that's normal for being among a bunch of strangers. Certainly I could use some divine assistance with my job search....
I can't put my finger on why exactly people like a lot of those present get on my nerves. The first speaker made reference to his being raised Catholic in a way that made it sound in opposition to being Christian, although it was not even implied so much as it seemed to be an underlying way of looking at the world, and I didn't like that. The second speaker mentioned our dependence on God. He gave as an example how God preserves our atmosphere as precisely the right combination of gases to allow us to breathe, and how if God ever "let go" of that we'd all be dead in an instant. I was thinking about how our atmosphere is more or less stable and God doesn't keep his metaphorical fist clenched on it to keep it from falling apart, and how people are already dying of a damaged atmosphere. Then there's the emphasis placed on "our Savior, Jesus Christ" where I would emphasize God as a whole. It seems that evangelistic Christians address most of their prayers specifically to Jesus. (They also use the word "just" a lot, but that's a separate pet peeve of mine.) I view the Trinity as a cohesive whole, but to hear some people talk you'd think Jesus and God were two different individuals. Finally, the issue of "God's plan"... I don't know how specific the man believes God's plans for each of us are. Personally, I believe God does have general preferences for what he'd like for each of us to do with our lives, but I think he's pretty flexible. I can't say that my being turned down for a summer job by Bluware last summer and working for Connexions instead shows the hand of God at work: that's just how things happened.
So anyway. The official meeting finally broke up at 9:45 and people headed across the street to the mall to network. I sat around and chatted a little and listened for maybe a half hour, dropped off a couple of the retail store applications I picked up yesterday, and came home, rather glum. I still need to take a job application to a local university, vacuum the floors, and start learning SQL.
I was missing Chris a lot when I went to bed last night, and again when I woke up. It's not so bad during the day when I have distractions, other things to think about, but when I'm trying to sleep he's on my mind. Sometimes the knowledge that we're months away from seeing each other hurts intensely. This morning I woke up around 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep, as occasionally happens. I think my father started jogging on the treadmill downstairs at 6 AM. I could just make out the strains of Star Wars music he was playing, and the effort of trying to figure out what I was hearing brought me to full alertness. At 20 after, I decided I might as well get up.
I started to take a walk around the neighborhood, but then I remembered that that JobSeekers group meets Friday mornings -- at 7:30 AM. So I headed over to the Fuddruckers where they meet. It turned out to be a Christian fellowship group. There were a couple of little devotional talks to tell us about how we need to place our trust in God to guide us to where we're meant to be, followed by people introducing themselves and naming the type of work they wanted, and people announcing job leads they'd found. The group was largely men and almost entirely middle aged; there was one other recent college graduate who happened to be female. I don't know if I'll go back; I didn't feel entirely comfortable, but that's normal for being among a bunch of strangers. Certainly I could use some divine assistance with my job search....
I can't put my finger on why exactly people like a lot of those present get on my nerves. The first speaker made reference to his being raised Catholic in a way that made it sound in opposition to being Christian, although it was not even implied so much as it seemed to be an underlying way of looking at the world, and I didn't like that. The second speaker mentioned our dependence on God. He gave as an example how God preserves our atmosphere as precisely the right combination of gases to allow us to breathe, and how if God ever "let go" of that we'd all be dead in an instant. I was thinking about how our atmosphere is more or less stable and God doesn't keep his metaphorical fist clenched on it to keep it from falling apart, and how people are already dying of a damaged atmosphere. Then there's the emphasis placed on "our Savior, Jesus Christ" where I would emphasize God as a whole. It seems that evangelistic Christians address most of their prayers specifically to Jesus. (They also use the word "just" a lot, but that's a separate pet peeve of mine.) I view the Trinity as a cohesive whole, but to hear some people talk you'd think Jesus and God were two different individuals. Finally, the issue of "God's plan"... I don't know how specific the man believes God's plans for each of us are. Personally, I believe God does have general preferences for what he'd like for each of us to do with our lives, but I think he's pretty flexible. I can't say that my being turned down for a summer job by Bluware last summer and working for Connexions instead shows the hand of God at work: that's just how things happened.
So anyway. The official meeting finally broke up at 9:45 and people headed across the street to the mall to network. I sat around and chatted a little and listened for maybe a half hour, dropped off a couple of the retail store applications I picked up yesterday, and came home, rather glum. I still need to take a job application to a local university, vacuum the floors, and start learning SQL.