May I speak to you in confidence?  Step over here to the corner.

Listen, I'm unhappy about the growing wrinkles around my eyes.  I looked at a recent picture of me standing beside
my 13-year-old daughter, and it wasn't me.  It was my Dad.  How did he get into the picture?

Graying hair is one thing.  Balding is another.  Frankly, I have both.  But add my furrowed Follis brow and
increasingly widening crow's feet around each eye, and I'll tell you, I look sick.

I've been very worried and depressed about this.  But on Tuesday my Fountain-of-Youth ship pulled into port with
the arrival of the May 13th edition of "Newsweek."  The feature piece explained the drug Botox, the once feared
deadly poison that now promises to bring a youthful appearance to millions of aging baby boomers.

Botox is an extremely purified, enormously diluted solution of botulinum toxin type A.  In small doses regularly
injected around the eyes, this drug is "safe."

The Food and Drug Administration announced in April that Botox has been approved "to temporarily improve the
appearance of moderate to severe frown lines between the eyebrows."

Just imagine.  My 47-year-old deep creases will vanish.  My face will glisten just like my teenage daughter's does.
With youthful skin around my eyes, you won't even notice my hair, whatever color I decide to make it.

Here's how Botox works.  A tiny bit of "poison" is injected around your eyes, temporarily paralyzing the muscles
for 4-6 months.  The Newsweek piece says a Botox injection takes away the ability to frown.  That's the point, of
course.

People formerly attended Tupperware parties.  You can now be the first in your neighborhood to host a Botox
party.  Church small groups can do this easily.  Simply invite a dermatologist or plastic surgeon to your home.  Have
the doc come to the party with 10-12 doses of the eternal youth serum.  Put out the fancy cheeses.  Have Christian
praise music playing in one corner and the doc sitting in the other corner paralyzing people's eye muscles with
Botox.

The cost isn't even that bad.  It'll be about $250-400 per person, maybe a little more.  Some will want their
unsightly crow's feet injected.  Others will want their furrowed brow paralyzed.  Come back together a week later
and laugh about your elective paralysis.  Try a group frown and then laugh at how happy everyone looks.

Friends, I see the stress people are under each and every day.  It's no secret to me or to you what it's doing to the
skin around your eyes.  Why not become a softer, kinder you.

More than 850,000 people in the U.S. were injected last year and the numbers are sky rocketing this year.
Allergan, the Calif.-based company producing Botox has committed $50 million to advertising, initially targeting
women from 35-50 years old.  Their ads will soon appear in 24 different magazines.

A church friend saw my excitement and said, "Now wait a minute, pal.  I want to make some comments.  Have you
ever read in the book of Ezekiel where God tells the Devil, 'Your heart was filled with pride because of all your
beauty.  You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.'"

"Hey, we're only talking about bringing out your natural beauty," I countered.

"Natural beauty," my friend responded.  "What is beauty? The book of I Peter says we should NOT be concerned
about outward beauty."

Picking up her Bible she read from I Peter: "You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the
unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God."

 And then she flipped to Isaiah, furrowed her unBotoxed brow and read to me about Jesus' physical appearance:
"There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him."

"Forget about looks," said my friend.  "That's external stuff.  God is interested in one thing -- the condition of the
heart."

Then she smiled, "Hey, why not invite Jesus to your Botox party.  Invite me, too.  I want to watch him kick over the
table holding the doc's Botox supplies faster than he kicked over the moneychanger's tables in the temple in
Jerusalem.  I want to hear Jesus say to the guests, 'You are like white-washed tombs -- beautiful on the outside but
filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity.'"

 Don Follis is an Urbana minister.  Reprinted with permission from the
Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, copyright 2002.