It was a wonderful night at Cornerstone tonight celebrating the coming birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. I always love the candles, it is such a reminder that Christ is the one who brought light into the darkness of this world, and walked among us as well. Merry Christmas everyone.
Posts Related to This Topic:
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.
Posts Related to This Topic:
This is usually one of the busiest days for getting from place to place with family functions, but for us, it is normally a nice quiet day here at the house. Today was similar. I was able to take a nice bike ride and enjoy some quiet time here at our house. I do this every so often but for Christmas today I wanted to highlight some of the blogs I read that are based somewhat on or about our faith in Jesus. So are you on the list? If not, please let me know, I love to add new blogs to my feed reader and it might be I just haven’t come across your blog yet.
Some here is some Christmas link love for some of the blogs I read.
Posts Related to This Topic:
Christmas is fast approaching and soon (for some) the gifts purchased up to this point will translate into a lousy January, but if you haven’t finished quite yet, please consider the 50,000 Shoes campaign. I wanted to give a quick update to my post back in November called Soles4Souls Blogging Challenge, 50,000 Pairs of Shoes in 50 Days. As b/ said in his post, there are so many worthy charities around this time of year, but one that is truly worthy is spending just $5 for 2 pairs of shoes for someone who doesn’t have any shoes.
I was listening to a song called “The Christian” this morning when I was getting ready for work, and it made me think, is how people see Christians, or perhaps how we see others who call themselves Christians? The third verse really stood out to me (in bold below) as I thought about the 50000 shoes campaign and how easy it should be for us bloggers to meet the goal put forth by Anne Jackson (they are even giving away really cool stuff like a Nintendo Wii and a MacBook).
What good does it do to just talk. I love when I find people who have taken their blogs or websites and have actually done something worth wild. Even if they don’t reach their goal it was great to see how many shoes have been donated from total strangers across the Internet. Consider these verses below. They may not have anything at all to do with shoes, but this (secular) song points out how we put ourselves first.
It’s a hell of a time to be thinking about heaven
Didn’t you forget the golden rule
You’ve been acting like Jesus owes you a favor
But he’s a little smart for you to foolYou complain how you forgets the gospel
You remind them seek and you shall find
Maybe youth will have a time for seeking
After they clean up what you left behindYou were right there when the plate was passed last Sunday
That’s the second time you’ve been to church all year
Could you really call yourself a Christian
If charity cost half as much as beer
You pray a little more as you grow older
You get religion as your hair turns gray
But you don’t need to worry about hereafter
Just worry what you’re going to do todayCause it’s a hell of a time to be thinking about heaven
Didn’t you forget the golden rule
You’ve been acting like Jesus owes you a favor
But he’s a little smart for you to fool
Yes my friend I think you’ve blown your cool—- The Christian, [Buffett]
After reading Tony Morgan’s post about 50,000 shoes called All Talk and No Action?, where he talked about the correlation between words and action, I was quite disgusted, or more like disappointed I guess. At that point, over 3500 blog posts had been written about the 50,000 shoes and only 1500 of those posts translated into the action of actually purchasing a pair of shoes. That means not only did not all the blog writers donate, but they also didn’t get any of their readers to donate either. We are talking $5 here, less than that cup of coffee at Starbucks or that 12-pack at the grocery store.
Just a quick look this morning found these blog posts from just the past few hours and days. Let’s be bloggers of action, not just words.
- 50,000 Shoes
- 50,000 Shoes In 50 Days
- Shoes From Tires?
- Help me buy 50,000 Shoes.
- Anne Jackson and 50,000 Shoes
- 50,000 Shoes
- 50,000 shoes in 50 days
- 50,000 shoes!
- 50,000 shoes
- 50,000 Shoes in 50 Days
- 50,000 Shoes Soles 4 Souls
- Final Shopping Days
My blog has approximately 100 subscribers. If each one of us donated $5 that would translate into 200 pairs of shoes. Deb and I are going to go ahead and make another Christmas donation and I would ask my readers if they were led to give to a worthy cause this Christmas check out 50,000 shoes. I know Anne Jackson personally (although briefly) and I know she has put a lot into achieving this goal. You can’t go wrong by giving someone a pair of shoes who doesn’t have any.
Posts Related to This Topic:
Our church has been going through a series called Simple Christmas and it was going well until this week. This week has been so incredibly crazy for me I haven’t even had time to do a blog post. Part of it is the photo in my Friday Feet post today. You can see a better description of this new entry into our house here.
I have a huge list of blog entries and all kinds of new posts to do here, hopefully I can get to them over the weekend. Have a nice weekend everyone.
Posts Related to This Topic:
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.
Posts Related to This Topic:
Thanksgiving weekend is just about to wind down and move into the 25 day rush to Christmas. It was a nice weekend with some nice rain showers and lots of food. I just finished watching one of the more lousy versions of the Iron bowl (if you are an Auburn fan) over the last few years and it ended in an Alabama romp. Alabama played well and will have a full plate next week coming up against Florida in the SEC Championship game.
Early on Thursday I did a quick photo shoot for Dale and Larry Fillmer (that would be mom and dad) for their Christmas card. Here are a few from the shoot that were my favorites (don’t think any of these made it on the card, but these were the ones I liked). Looking forward to the new series that starts tomorrow at cumc called Simple Christmas. Something we can all take to heart, focusing on what is important at Christmas and why we celebrate the holiday in the first place, can’t wait. If you are in the Auburn area, come by at 9am or 11am and see what it’s all about.
I am really looking forward to this Christmas season and all the possibilities of the upcoming new year. I always look forward to the changing of the new year. It always seems to bring change and a new time of growth for my family, as it is with many, and I can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store for us in 2009. Celebrating a Simple Christmas is going to be a great place for my family to transition into the new year.
