This year at our church to celebrate Christmas, instead of doing fancy decorations and traditional garland we have been planning for quite a while now to do a “food drop” for the Auburn area. So if you were to walk around the church right now you will see boxes everywhere. A Christmas tree made out of boxes, presents made out of gigantic boxes, and the filled and returned boxes we started to give out this past Sunday. The way we have tried to communicate this on our own website is that we are never more like Jesus then when we serve others. And throughout the month of December, Cornerstone members and attenders (or anyone who wants to be a part giving back to our community) will be given the opportunity to serve others using a simple box. We are asking everyone to:
- Pick up a box and packing list from the Cornerstone lobby.
- Pack the box full of food for families in Lee County.
- Return the filled box to the church by January 1, 2012.
- Saturday, January 7, gather at Cornerstone and pack the SUV’s, minivans and pickup trucks with these boxes and head out to specific communities to pass out these boxes to families in our area. (We will work with the Food Bank of East Alabama to target the communities in the greatest need.)
This is an opportunity to make a tangible difference in someone’s life by offering basic necessities that many of us take for granted. We can make the New Year great for our community with our simple gift of a box of food, and we are trying to have over 1,000 boxes filled by January 1st. For more information you can also visit the Cornerstone Food Drop 2012 info page, or visit Lee’s blog post as well.
If you are reading this and saying to yourself, I don’t go to Cornerstone so that’s nice and all but who cares… well, you don’t have to, but you can still participate. If you are in the Auburn-Opelika area, just come by the church lobby and pick up a packing list and a box and return it before January 1st.
Either way, whether you participate or not, I hope you can make it a priority this Christmas to go beyond the normal gift giving and remember others who are not as fortunate. I love that about Cornerstone, and I love seeing the church be the church. We need to think, learn, study, and understand God’s word, but we also need to go… and do. How can we say we believe what the scriptures say unless we actually do what it says. I hate the commercialization that always goes along with this time of year, but I love this. Hope you will help make it a success as well.
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Our church started a new series yesterday called Simple Christmas (see Advent and A Christmas thought) marking the beginning of the Advent season, and what started on Black Friday as the Christmas shopping season.
Today is Cyber Monday as it has been called, the day when online retailers do their big sales and discounts that the B&M stores did on Friday. One of the ways Deb and I are going to celebrate Christmas this year is In keeping with the series theme we started on Sunday we are going to make a few donations to Living Water. So, if you were expecting to get an actual physical Christmas present from us this year, this might be it. Our church already knows the impact a well can have (see Day 1 and Creative Chaos 14 // Allowing God to Work in Your Church), when our church raised over $30,000 to dig a well (and much more) for a sister plant church in Uganda. Anyone involved will tell you it was an incredible experience, and it doesn’t take much to make a difference.
This of course isn’t the only way to make Christmas simple again. The idea is to keep our focus on Jesus this Christmas and not the chaos and craziness that goes along with the Christmas shopping frenzy and that might be something totally different to your family than it is to my family. Since Deb and I are in a house of two (minus the dogs), we don’t normally go nuts for any holiday, but our focus is not always on Jesus either.
Merry Christmas everyone.
