Journal of Whispers Gallery Photos + Article Link

from Chris Austin

And don't miss this article from the Christian County Headliner about the gallery.

Young Men Retreat to Steel Creek

by Donovan Dobbs

On November 2-3, seventeen young and a few old men ventured into the wilds of Northwest Arkansas. This brave group hazard the bitter cold and the roar of killer elk near the camp! In the morning, we awoke to hearty nourishment that ultimately proved to help in our survival of the grueling day of the death-defying climbing before us. Throughout the plunge from 2100 feet above sea level to 600 feet above sea level, the men stayed together and fought the mountain. When we finally reached the bottom, all were accounted for, but a few were cut and bleeding.

OK, the trip was not quite as harrowing as I just described, but it was fun. The group was a mix of young and older—not old. When we arrived at the camp on Friday night, hot food prepared by our personal outdoor chef Eugene was waiting. Dinner was hamburgers and seasoned potato halves. It was a good meal, but dessert was the bomb! It was blueberry cobbler cooked in a Dutch oven, and it melted in our mouths. This meal was the first of three fixed with expertise by Eugene. His cooking alone was worth the trip. Every man there left on Saturday full and fat or fatter.

Friday night was a real blessing. Dallas posed the question about Christian leadership and what is it. Each man participated. The discussion focused on God's role for men, and the consensus is that a leader should be a servant. It was encouraging to hear the younger men contribute and talk about leadership in their lives and generation as it applies to God. If you had listened to the conversation, you could not help but be encouraged by the commitment to Christ from those who participated.

For those who did not go, you missed beautiful scenery and invigorating exercise. One highlight was the discussion as we walked down the mountain and through a bamboo forest. (I never knew they had a bamboo forest in Arkansas.) The discussion centered around different Christian authors and their theology or in some cases, the lack thereof. As the conversation ebbed and flowed, I thought what an interesting conversation to have in the mountains and woods that God has skillfully crafted. Talking about Christ our king in one of his magnificent kingdoms that is how to spend a day.

Those of us who went were blessed and developed or strengthened our relationships with each other. I am sure that I speak for all when I say thanks to Dallas and Sam for planning and providing the trip. I can hardly wait for the next outing!

Five Thousand Pounds of Potatoes

Editor's Note: Victory Mission will need volunteers on Saturday, 15 December, from 8–11 AM to deliver Christmas meals to Springfield residents. Stay tuned to E.notes for more details (and be cleaning out your trunk) in the meantime!

by Heather Myer

On an otherwise uneventful Saturday morning, 17 of Life Point’s young adults gathered together in the heart of Springfield. Abandoning much-desired sleep, we shook off drowsiness and bypassed a lazy morning to serve our community. We arrived in carpools from Ozark, Nixa, and the far corners of Springfield for two purposes: to eat chocolate muffins and help with the Victory Mission's Thanksgiving Drive. VM assists families who have come across difficult times and eases their burden by providing groceries necessary for a holiday feast. We loaded delivery vehicles with food items. FedEx joined families and friends to go on quests through side streets in order to greet families and hand deliver meals. Five hundred families and over 1,500 individuals were blessed by Victory Missions.

We quickly learned that in order to make an impact for our community, we must first serve each other. Traffic cones provided by Matt and Stephen and hand signals by Sarah, clad in a bright orange sweater, directed cars forward. Town Criers such as Amy Hill were necessary to guide Kit, Jeff, and Dallas as they carried large turkeys. Andrea shook open brown paper bags for Heather G. to fill with cartons of eggs. Colby tore open bundles of potatoes for Jon. Courtney and Lyndsey encouraged others with good cheer as they manned the grocery sack pallet. Alison and Kylie told others what was needed to complete orders as they dashed between Fords and Nissans, arms filled with turkey loaves and eggs. Our labor knew no boundaries to height. A petite Katie handed a rather tall Heather M. a low-lying bag of groceries before grabbing one of her own. A moment later, Heather helped Katie hoist her bag in the bed of a large pick-up.

Within a 3 hour time span, our toil was completed. Through a collective group effort we lifted 5,000 lbs of potatoes, carried 6,000 eggs, tossed over 5,000 lbs of turkey, and handed over 500 sacks of dry goods. Our weight-bearing exercises have brought a new meaning to “community.” Several lessons were learned by our labors:

1. Assembly lines work great for playing pass-the-turkey and re-boxing eggs.
2. It is never fun to be too late for the action. If trunk has already been filled, you don’t want to be the one returning a 50 lbs bundle of potatoes to a pallet.
3. Don’t be fooled by appearances. Some large SUVs were only able to take 3 meals. Several 2 door cars held up to 9 meals!
4. It is necessary to start a chilly morning with hot chocolate and a prayer of thanksgiving to our Lord.

Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does. —Ephesians 6:7–8

How to Avoid Being a Grinch

by Heather Myer

Plastic pine trees hit Sears early in August. Borders promoted the new Josh Groban holiday CD in September. Wal-Mart sold ornaments and holiday lights in October. Halloween had not fully been displayed before tree toppers made their grand appearance. Can Christmas really be considered seasonal when merchandising is promoted for 1/3 of the year? Does the hustle and bustle preceding December take away from the special feelings and fond memories tied to the 25th? The early sales of wreaths and jingle bells have made Scrooges out of many of us.

End of the year shopping can be a rather unpleasant experience. Cart fights, deep sighs, and angry glares are often arise from weary shoppers even before they enter Price-Cutter. Virtues such as patience and kindness are forgotten after lengthy quests for a parking spot at the Battlefield Mall. Does avoiding tackling wish lists until the day after Thanksgiving increase your enjoyment of Target? Do long lines while listening to endless renditions of Hanson, Chipmunks, and Mariah Carey singing carols sprinkle extra magic on sprees at Toys-R-Us?

Allow yourself to slow down and rest for a moment. Consider all that you are busily preparing. Santa is irrelevant. Iridescent plastic trees that change colors are needless. For now, stockings, bows, bells, mistletoe, and holly can remain unhung. Cider, cocoa, and eggnog are best unsipped. Leave the feasts unplanned. Let the toys and clothing remain unwrapped. For this moment, do not be concerned over things, sights, sounds, smells, or tastes. These are meaningless. Sweep all of these distractions under the tree skirt. They are unimportant. Instead, focus your mind on the birth of Christ. Christmas is in remembrance of our Lord, our Promise, our Redeemer, our King. Allow your heart to be renewed and your spirit refreshed in the freedom that we have as believers. We have the promise of eternal life through our Savior. It is in remembrance of his birth that we are preparing to rejoice with family and dear friends. In celebration of God’s greatest gift, perhaps we can be a bit kinder to strangers and show love for one another. Park at the back of the lot to allow the elderly a more convenient parking spot. Make eye contact with the Salvation Army bell ringer. Smile at a stranger and let them pass you in the aisle. Allow an anxious businessman to go before you in the checkout line. Hold a door open for a mother struggling with a cart full of children and bags. While decorations and holiday cards can wait, good will to others is something that should not be confined to the 31 days of December.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on the earth peace, good will toward men!” —Luke 2:13–14

—Photo Source

2007 Land Video 3

2007 Land Video 2

2007 Land Video 1

The Skinny on RSS

If you've been around LifePoint the last few weeks, you know that we've been switching up our E.notes format so we can offer our weekly announcements by both e-mail and RSS. Until about a year ago, I hadn't the slightest clue about RSS, but once I learned what it did and how powerful it is, I was on the RSS train.

So what exactly is RSS? It stands for really simple syndication. By using an application called a reader and adding subscriptions from your favorite news sites and blogs (hmm...E.notes, What Is the Point?, and the LifePoint Journal come to mind), the new content from those sites comes to you in your reader. You no longer have to remember all the sites you frequently read, go to them, and hope for new content; if a site has been updated, the new content will appear in your reader.

Still confused? Watch this little video produced by Common Craft.to see how you can start using RSS within minutes. We'd have made our own video, but we hate reinventing the wheel, and this one is super easy to understand.

Click To Play

To summarize the video, to get started with RSS, you need a reader (e.g. Google Reader, NewsGator, Bloglines, My Yahoo!, etc.). Once you have a reader, add subscriptions to your account by looking for and clicking on the orange RSS logo. That's it! Just start reading!

If you have any questions about RSS or need help setting it up on your computer, don't hesitate to e-mail me your questions.

— Sarah Austin
saustin@lifepointozark.com

P.S.Not ready to jump on the RSS train but still want to stay in the loop? No problem! You can subscribe to e-mail updates from every LifePoint blog. Just navigate to the blog's home page, and enter your e-mail address in the right column under "Subscribe to E-mail Updates."

A Dusty Bible Reveals a Dirty Life

by Heather Myer

Taking the back way from Grand and Glenstone through the streets of Springfield in attempts to reach South 65 allows one to drive past five churches. These churches each have message boards that share snip-its of wisdom to the masses in the manner of a fortune cookie. They are unavoidable. Trite sayings like “A DUSTY BIBLE REVEALS A DIRTY LIFE” can both convict slackers and encourage a good house cleaning. Cautions such as “BEWARE THE HIGH COST OF LOW LIVING” cause confusion. Is this a challenge to be financially thrifty or to avoid a lurid life of sin? “THE FIERY FURNACE OF HELL IS VERY HOT INDEED!” can make one wonder how exactly the author would be so familiar with the finer qualities of Hades. It can also inspire a trip to the sauna on a cold day. Clever play-on words such as, “SEVEN DAYS WITHOUT CHURCH MAKES ONE WEAK” actually make drivers recall early memories of elementary school lessons on homonyms and plurality. Rarely the messages can be encouraging, “THE BIBLE THAT IS FALLING APART IS OWNED BY A CHRISTIAN THAT ISN’T.” Or perhaps the owner accidentally left it the car on a hot summer’s day and the binding melted. Hrm…(guilty pause)...yes, Mum, this is the real reason why a new Bible is on my Christmas list.

Church message boards are often filled with irritating and impolite clichés. Rather than inspire readers to dive into the word, they can be left feeling annoyed and occasionally insulted. Give us scripture! A Proverb or a Psalm to think of on our way to work. Perhaps a prayer request to lift up as we drive past. Even a community event for the public is a nice touch. At least post the service times so by-passers will know when worship occurs. If believers find these messages irksome, how much more annoyed would unbelievers find them? Would the lost really be tempted to attend a church after reading an insulting message? After all, another infamous cliché states, “IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING NICE TO SAY, DON’T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL.”

Read what Pastor Dennis has to say about church signs.

Daughters of Eve

by Heather Myer

The most innate and basic desire for love dates back to the very dawn of time. It is the result of original sin. Sons of Adam are cursed to toil the soil and have physical difficulty due to the unyielding earth and to return, as dust to the ground. Daughters of Eve are cursed emotionally, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" (Gen. 3:16). Are all Daughters of Eve are affected by this curse? Single women do not have husbands dominant over them. We do not have husbands to physically desire. And pain in childbirth? What child? At first glance, this seems to be a married woman’s curse.

Being a bride is a game little girls play at a very young age. They drape sheer white curtains over their hair, wear their mother’s high heels, and walk down an imaginary aisle. As adults, ladies flip through bridal catalogs and window shop at David’s Bridal and the Secret Garden. Single women yearn for love. Most are haunted by missed opportunities or jaded by past hurts. We long for the blessings of marriage: to be a wife, a lover, and a mother. Eve's curse was to desire after her husband. Does this refer to only a carnal, physical desire? Or can it mean something more?

With Eve’s sample of the forbidden fruit, God cursed her with a longing for completion. Daughters of Eve are to desire Sons of Adam, despite the fact that they are fated to return to dust. Genesis 2:18 says that it is not good for man to be alone. God ensured that Eve would want to complete and accompany Adam despite the finality and hardships of his life. She possessed knowledge of his fate and the pain that an imperfect relationship could cause. Yet, God made Daughters of Eve desire Sons of Adam with full knowledge of their labor, hardships, and mortality. As single women, we are fated to long for what do not have: completion. Rather than being based in Lucifer’s lies, this basic desire of the heart originates with Lady Eve‘s first taste of the Tree of Life and results in a curse made especially for us.

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Photo by Ravonne Post

Foreign Lips & Strange Tongues

by Heather Myer

Last night I watched a Japanese movie called The House of the Flying Daggers. I could not understand it without reading the captions. It was, of course, in Japanese. Squinting to read the small yellow print without my glasses, I turned the volume up. This did not help. The sound was turned up some more. The unfamiliar words made no sense what so ever to my Anglican ears. The different pitches and tonalities did not register a meaning. Reaching for the remote buttons again, I settled down with a bowl of popcorn. Munching on my treat, I realized that crunching inhibited hearing the movie. The volume was turned up louder still. Shrill foreign voices echoed through my home. They did not help me understand the fast paced Japanese in the least. Giving up, I searched my apartment for a pair of glasses to at last enjoy the movie.

How often in our Christian walks do we not understand God’s message? How often do we attempt to turn up the quantitative volume on praise and worship, fellowship activities, and serving opportunities? Can a deeper understanding of God be reached through events alone? Just because the volume is turned up does not mean that an understanding has been reached. Sometimes, turning the volume down and reading instead provides knowledge and truth that a higher level cannot.

With foreign lips and strange tongues, God will speak to this people. —Is. 28:11

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http://japanese.about.com/blsjp20_5.htm