2nd Annual ec Photo Contest WINNERS!

After much discussion and contemplating every submission we received for our 2nd annual photo contest, we're unveiling the winners today:

Scenic Shots category:
1st place: Brittanie Hignight
2nd place: Calen Reagin
Honorable Mention: Catie Foster

Faces category:
1st place: Christina Blake
2nd place: Melissa Seibert
Honorable Mention: Tracy Blackwell

You can check out the winning photos on our Facebook page. They'll also be published in the April 2011 issue of ec and featured here on the blog during the week of April 4, 2011.                                                                                                             

Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Yay! Friday is finally here! We know you're probably thinking the same thing as your school year draws to a close. But you have to rest your brain from all that studying, final prep, big decisions, paper-writing, and everything else you've got going on at some point. We hope you take some time out to enjoy the randomness that is "Snippets and Soundbites." And if today's edition isn't enough, as always, check out page 38 of this month's (and every month's) ec.

That's not a parking spot.
We've featured stories about people driving their cars into buildings here before, but none of those stories quite matched this one in strangeness. Apparently, a Connecticut man drove his car into a stone wall late last week, went airborne, and landed on the roof of an accountant's office before coming to a complete stop in a yard. The car flipped several times after going airborne, punching a hole in the roof of Barry Gould's (the accountant) office. After inflicting damage upon the office, the car came to a stop in the yard, taking down power lines on the way. Utility crews ahd to cut the power to those lines before the driver could exit the car. The good news is that the driver was not seriously injured and Gould is referring to the hole in his office building as a skylight. The bad news is that the driver may face charges after the police complete their investigation of the event. To read all about it, go here.

Park it!
Perilous parking tales continue in this week's "Snippets and Soundbites." This Wednesday, a 67-year-old Oklahoma man had a scare when he backed his car through the exterior wall on the seventh floor of a high rise parking garage in downtown Tulsa, managing to stop just in time. The driver says that his foot got stuck between the accelerator and the brake in his Mercedes as he was backing into the parking space. The car burst through the wall, spraying debris onto the parking lot below. The trunk and back tires were visible for awhile, until officials safely drove the vehicle back inside. The driver was not injured and will not be ticketed. Check out the whole story, including pics, here.

The man from Diamond finds a diamond.
It just seems perfectly ironic that a man from Diamond, Mo., recently discovered a 4.89 carat diamond. The man, a retired minister, was visiting Crater of Diamonds State Park in nearby Arkansas. Crater of Diamonds State Park is the only diamond-producing site in the world where visitors can search for diamonds. The policy at the park is that if you find a diamond, it's yours to keep. When Mack Evans found his diamond, he wasn't even sure it was a diamond and almost threw it away. The 4.89 carat diamond is about the size of jellybean, is grayish white, and is a "Ghost Diamond," meaning that instead of forming as a single crystal like most diamonds, it formed as an aggregate. To read all about it, go here.

Be a blessing

When I got to work this morning, I opened up my e-mail, followed by my calendar and saw that I was scheduled to blog here today.

I'm not going to lie; I groaned a little.

It's Monday. I have no thoughts. I feel uncreative. I mean, I got to work a little later than I wanted and traffic was the tiniest bit (read: alot) stressful.

As I sometimes do, I turned to read today's devotion in ec. And before I even got past the title, I was feeling a little convicted. I mean, be a blessing? I'd been frustrated by a woman in traffic and had given her THE GLARE, while talking to myself in my car about how dumb she was being. And she saw me because we made eye contact and neither of us were too happy with the other. Was that being a blessing?

I'd say probably not.

I don't want to be one of those people who make others feel badly about every mistake we make. Even as a Christian, we all sometimes sin. But my point is that as believers, we don't have to. My point is that we have opportunities to react differently in situations so that the world can see Christ in us. Today, I could have chosen not to let anger and frustration rule. A few days ago, I could have chosen to keep my mouth shut and not gossip. There are numerous times in my life when I could have responded with love and grace rather than judgment and shock.

As believers, we're given opportunities every day to choose the good and shine for Christ—even in traffic. Even at school. Even when your little brother or sister is being the most annoying person on the planet. Even when your best friend hurts your feelings. Even when your parents make mistakes.

Be on the lookout for those opportunities today. Before you respond with your first inclination—anger, frustration, hurtful words, whatever—stop and ask for the Holy Spirit's guidance. Let Him have control and you'll be amazed at the even-tempered, God-controlled words that come out of your mouth and the peace that covers you.

Choose to be a blessing today!

Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Ah, hello, Friday! We're happy to see you!

It's been a long week for us here in the ec offices. If you're suffering from the same malady, then we think today's edition of "Snippets and Soundbites" will be the perfect way to start the weekend. And if all this craziness isn't enough for you, be sure to check out "Snippets and Soundbites" on page 38 of this month's (and every month's) issue of ec.

Ready? Here. We. Go.

Where for art thou?
So you're probably familiar with a notable English playwright and poet named William Shakespeare, right? While the exact date of his birth is not known (he was baptized on April 26), it is generally celebrated today, April 23. And because of that, Shakespeare fans all over the place have interesting plans to celebrate the Bard's birth. At Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace and the location of several houses he lived in, the city has a big birthday party in the works. It's actually a traditional event they've been putting on for more than two centuries. There will be three days of celebration, complete with celebrations, tours of the Shakespeare historic houses, literary and musical events, and, of course, theater productions. And here in Nashville, Shakespeare fans are celebrating in a little more, well, quirky way. They'll be celebrating Shakespeare's 446 birthday in Centennial Park in Nashville by staging a huge balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet." Residents have been invited to arrive at the park at 6 p.m. in costume, with or without partners, to portray the beloved scene. They'll get a little coaching, then perform the scene in unison. Our favorite part of the paragraph describing the event? This sentence: Prizes will be given for “Most Creative Costume,” “Best Star-Crossed Lovers Costume” and even “Best Dog Costume.” Read all about the Nashville event here.

It's hard to be mayor. 

In other Tennessee news, there's also an interesting news report out of southeast Tennessee. Carl Robin Geary is the newly elected mayor of Tracy City, Tenn. There's just one problem: he's dead. Geary was a candidate for the position, but passed away suddenly a few weeks ago. His death was widely reported in the area, but Geary still won the election for mayor last Tuesday, beating out incumbent Barbara Brock. The city council will now have to appoint a mayor to serve a four-year term. To read more, go here.

Class is canceled!
In general, not much causes a college class to be canceled. . . but students often find reasons to skip class. On Wednesday at Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, students had an interesting choice: go to class or watch police and university officials try to capture two cows that had gotten loose on the campus. Many chose the cow recovery effort. The cows got away from their owner on Wednesday afternoon when he had taken them to campus to have their hooves trimmed at the university's veterinary medical center. They found their way to the soccer field, where one of the runaways was lassoed. The other ran across traffic into a grove of trees, but was eventually caught and both were taken home. Thankfully, only one police officer had to be treated for injuries related to the event. We figure there are now new rules in place about transporting livestock onto the Ohio State campus! Read all about the roundup here.

Book report

Today’s devotion is about transformation. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I read two books in the last few days on that topic. If you haven’t read Same Kind of Different as Me, go get yourself a copy and read it. Be prepared to cry like a small child. (Which makes things very awkward for the person beside you on an airplane, FYI.) The other book I read was What is the What, which is about the plight of Sudanese refugees. Having met a couple of Sudanese refugees at my church several years ago, I’m now saddened by the fact that I didn’t reach out to them more, to try to get to know them and their stories. According to that book, those people have been through a literal hell on earth, and I’m sorry I didn’t know it when I met those two men.

The gentlemen in Same Kind of Different as Me allowed the love of Christ (shown by others) to transform them, permanently. A rich guy, at the prompting of his wife, reached out to a scary homeless man. The two couldn’t have been more different. But their unlikely friendship brought out the best in each other, teaching them both to trust, to rely on others, and to love.

While reading about the transformation of the guys in these two books, I came away from reading them with the stark realization that I jump to conclusions about people. I don’t know their stories. I don’t take the time to really find out about why people act the way they do. Especially if they’re dirty, smelly, or look really different from me. And I would like to change that. I can’t promise that I’ll spend hours on the street getting to know the homeless guys who hang out there, but I can promise that I will be less hasty to jump to conclusions about how they got there. I won’t be as quick to jump to conclusions about a girl simply based on the way she’s dressed. I’ll be a bit slower to assume things about someone just because they speak a certain way.

We all have a story. Are you taking the time to know the stories of the people around you? Are you allowing Christ to transform your own life so that you can point to Him when people want to know your story?

Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Welcome to Friday, ec fans! (It's been a kind of long week for us here in the office, so Friday is being celebrated with much excitement this week!)

We hope today is a day of celebration for you today, too. And if you need a little help finding a reason to celebrate—or at least laugh—we've got just the thing for you in today's post of all news random and weird. And if it's simply not enough, be sure to check out page 38 of this month's (and every month's) issue of ec.

Ready?

A refreshing dress
Every year we come across strange stories about teens who've made prom outfits out of all kinds of interesting materials. Like duct tape, garbage bags, or whatever. This year's latest: a dress made out of gum wrappers. That's right. An Iowa teen made her dress entirely out of gum wrappers from Wrigley's "5" gum. And she didn't stop there, Elizabeth Rasmuson also made a matching vest for her boyfriend to wear. Both items are blue and white, like the wrappers for the couples' favorite gum. Rasmuson got the idea after hearing about someone making a dress out of duct tape and started making plans for an interesting dress of her own. She and your boyfriend began collecting gum wrappers last August, but she says she stopped counting after 200. For more info and to see the dress and local news videos, go here.


No more food fights for you
It seems even school cafeteria food fights have embraced technology. A few weeks ago, students at Atlantic City High School orchestrated a whole food fight via cell phones, but don't think the fight went unnoticed. Nope, the cafeteria staff and school administration wasn't pleased with the students' actions or the big mess that had to be cleaned up. The administration actually has policy in place when food fights happen: for the next couple of days, students only get foods that meet the most basic food requirement on their plates for the next couple of days. So on Wednesday and Thursday, students only got cheese sandwiches. The school superintendent says they'll get a regular meal today and stands firmly behind the policy. Read all about it here.

ec's new friend

The staff of ec magazine has a new friend who will take a little bit of explaining. See, a few years ago, we had a managing director who was a big Chuck Norris fan. So, somewhere along the line, someone gave him a cardboard stand-up of Chuck. Let's just say that Chuck had a lot of adventures after he came to live on our floor. When that managing director moved on to another position in our company, he left the Chuck Norris stand-up behind. (I know, right?!) So, Chuck floated aimlessly around the department for a bit, then languished for months and months in an empty office. Earlier this week that office was being cleaned out and the ec team decided to take possession of Chuck. So now he's hanging out in one of our offices. We think Chuck needs to go on some adventures. . . .that will of course be shared with you. Any ideas for what he should do?

Discovering your spiritual gifts

If you're an avid ec reader, you know that for the last few months, we've been doing a series of articles on spiritual disciplines. This month, the article focuses of the spiritual discipline of service and as part of that, we invited you to discover your spiritual gifts and get involved in ministries or activities that use those gifts.

But how do you find out what your spiritual gifts are? A good first step would be to read what the Bible has to say about spiritual gifts. Check out 1 Corinthians 12:17-30 and Romans 12:6-8. Pray for understanding as you read these passages and for the Holy Spirit to make your gifts clear to you.

Another important part of finding out what your spiritual gifts are is taking a spiritual gifts inventory. And you're in luck, because we've got a spiritual gifts inventory all ready for you. Do know that this will take some time and it's probably something you'll want to do in a quiet place where you have space and time to think.

Let us know what you find out!

(P.S. The spiritual gifts inventory is a PDF, so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to access it. Feel free to print it out and work on it at your convenience.) 

Friday Snippets and Soundbites

We at ec hope that you all had a blessed Easter. We certainly enjoyed spending some time with our friends, church families, and families and focusing on what Jesus did for us. He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

But we're also fairly sure you missed your weekly dose of crazy here on the ec blog. So, “Snippets and Soundbites” is back this week. And if you need more random news in your life, be sure to check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec!

Let's get on with the show. . .

A way with words

This first story leaves us wishing the San Francisco Giants and Majestic, the company that manufactures all of the jerseys worn by Major League Baseball, knew Emily Cole, the production editor for ec. That's because Emily has an eye for the details and she would have caught the typo on Giants reserve player Eugenio Velez's jersey long before he took the field. On Wednesday night, the Giants were playing the Astros and Velez entered the game in a double swith in the seventh inning. But his road gray uniform didn't say "San Francisco." Nope, it read "San Fracicso." Yes, you read that correctly. That's pretty funny for those of us who work with words all day long; it's even funnier when you find out that Velez and no one else on the team says they noticed the misspelling. Apparently, the Associated Press tipped Velez off to the blunder when they reached him by phone on the team bus as the team rolled into the airport on their way home. The city's name was spelled correctly on the rest of the team's jerseys. The typo will be fixed by the team's next road trip, though. To read all about it go here.

Joke's on you
April Fool's Day was last week, and we're sure some of you pulled some fairly elaborate pranks. Maybe not as elaborate as a newspaper in Jordan that's probably regretting their April Fool's Day antics that led to an Orson-Welles-War-of-the-World-radio-broadcast-type hysteria. The paper printed a story chronicling a late-night visit by 10-foot-tall aliens in flying saucers and PEOPLE BELIEVED IT. The story said a UFO had landed near the desert town of Jafr, some 185 miles from the capital, Amman. The report said the UFOs lit up the whole town, interrupted communications and sent fearful residents streaming into the streets. Even the mayor got caught up in the hoax and sent authorities in search of the aliens. Students didn't go to school and the mayor almost evacuated the entire town. The paper has apologized for the whole mess, but the mayor of Jafr still says he might sue. Read about all the hysteria and panic here.

GPS, anyone?
A thief in Utah didn't think through his criminal activity very well. That's because after stealing two phones from a convenience store, the man flagged down an investigating officer and ASKED HIM FOR DIRECTIONS! The police officer noticed the man met the description the clerk had given of the robber. In addition, the thief had left a slip of paper with an address written on it at the scene and the man who flagged down the officer asked for directions to that specific address. The officer grew suspicious, then arrested the man after finding both phones and a small amount of marijuana. Read all about it here.

that fresh spring clean feeling

It’s springtime, which means it’s spring CLEANING time. I know you’re excited, but please contain yourself. I’m trying to.

Even if you’re not like me and don’t ask for cleaning products/tools for Christmas, maybe you should take some time this spring to clean and organize. After all, you can’t take all that stuff with you when you die. (Morbid, I know.)

Did you read today’s devotion on page 11? It prompted this blog post because it talks about your inheritance. I’m not talking about the stuff left to you by an elderly relative you barely knew when he or she died, but about your eternal inheritance—the one Christians get by accepting Jesus. All the stuff we collect on earth may be great, but it’s not going to last. And even if it does last hundreds of years, we don’t. (And when we die, we have to leave our stuff to someone else.) If you’re a believer, none of those belongings you loved and cherished on earth is going to matter once you get to heaven anyway. I bet we won’t even remember the stuff we collected on earth that cluttered our rooms and attics.

So why don’t you make time this week or month to go through your stuff? I think you’ll be glad you did. Here are some ideas:
• Give away or donate the clothes you haven’t worn in a year or more.
• Let go of those love notes from ex-boyfriends/girlfriends. (Make a paper-mache piñata out of them for Cinco De Mayo!)
• Take the books you’re not going to read again to your church or a local ministry that might need them.
• All the hotel soaps and shampoos you know you’ll never use but can’t stand to throw away? Donate them to a homeless shelter or ministry. They’ll use them!
• Still keeping your school notebooks from elementary school? Why? Have you used them since you finished that grade? Recycle those things!
• Got a load of stuffed animals taking up most of your closet? Go through them, pick out a few favorites to keep for sentimental reasons, then donate the rest (provided they’re in good condition) to a hospital or police station for kids to have when they’re afraid.

While it may be hard to part with something because it’s yours (especially if you bought it with your hard-earned cash), if you’re not using it, it’s not doing anyone any good. Even though getting rid of your things is never easy, when you look at all your belongings in light of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:19-21, hopefully it’ll make it a little less tough.

We’re not saying you should give away everything you own and live in squalor, but if you’ve got more than you need, why not share with those in need? Plus, we’re pretty sure your mom might just squeal with delight at the sight of your freshly cleaned room.

The Big Picture

“I think I’ve made you too small,” or so goes a lyric from an Addison Road song. I have to admit: I downloaded their album on a whim fueled by my brother’s advice and the fact that I liked their song “Hope Now,” which was all over Christian radio at the time.

But when I sat down to listen (I always listen to a new album in its entirety when I buy it), “Hope Now” wasn’t the song that gave me pause. It was “What Do I Know of Holy?,” the song I quoted earlier. That song felt like it was my own thoughts set to music. What did I know of holiness? Had I made a box for God and tried to fit Him into it? Had I so focused on my concept of who God was and what He was doing that I’d missed out on the bigness of His plan?

That’s something I’ve thought a lot about these last few weeks—how big God is and how vast His plans for us really are. We like to pick and choose from among God’s characteristics and paint a portrait that makes Him more understandable to us. God is love. God is patient. Jesus longs to be our Shepherd. God never leaves us. God has plans for us. All of those things are true, but God is also so much more. All of us who have accepted Christ as our Savior and Lord are absolutely thankful for His salvation, but sometimes we simply see it as a personal thing and miss out on the “bigness” of that gift—how God’s salvation changes us and the people that gift calls us to be.

This month, we at ec want you to see God for who He is and recognize the immenseness of His redemption. This Easter, as you ponder Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, we want you to know that Jesus’ sacrifice was always part of God’s plan, as Jennifer Denning so eloquently explains in her cover article on page 26. We want you to understand how God’s overwhelming love transforms us and calls us to a different way of life, something you’ll see in Brandy Campbell’s article on page 45, Dan DeWitt’s story on page 56, and this month’s installment of our spiritual disciplines series (p. 62). There will be fun stuff, too, like Lauren Farmer’s article on prom (p. 16) and our guide to baseball (p. 40), but it’s our hope that somewhere in this month’s devotions, articles, and features, you encounter a God who overwhelms you—with His love, with His mercy, and with the grand scale of His plan to redeem us all.

It’s easy for me to try to put God into a box, to try to come up with this picture of who He is that simultaneously makes Him more understandable and makes me feel comfortable. But that’s not God. It’s my prayer this month that you get a glimpse of who God really is—His holiness, His overwhelming love for you, and His power to redeem us all so that you get uncomfortable and let Him change you.