Jesus Loves All the Little Pumpkins

1John 4:4 says, "... greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world."

Hello! I know that Halloween in itself is controversial and our pastor did a nice job of speaking about it in his sermon today about the history and traditions of this fall celebration, as well as that of "Saints Day" on Nov.1.  More about that later.

So, many of us have different approaches to this date of October 31st and I was thinking about this earlier in the week.  I read something on the KLOVE website about Halloween and its origins  Here is the link to the article: KLOVE  After reading it I was thinking should I feel guilty that my kids like dressing up in costumes and getting some candy from the neighbors or carving pumpkins?  Should we go to one of the church fall harvest celebrations instead? We always choose costumes that have a positive theme and we don't participate in anything "scary".  Should I take away the fun things? Are they wrong?

Well, we live in a friendly neighborhood and many children come here from other parts of town to trick-or-treat in our area.  We have always generously passed out candy and then walked around to a few of the neighbors ourselves.  Last year, my mom was able to stay on our front porch while we were taking the children around to trick-or-treat and she enjoyed helping.

So as I was thinking about the article on KLOVE I had a sudden inspiration. I thought "we have all of these children that come to our door for only one night each year. How can we just show them God's love?  I decided that with the candy I would make little cards that said something like a Bible verse.  I wanted to "shine our light" into the darkness.  I talked with the kids about it and they thought it was a good idea.  Then, I thought about the ages of many of the children that visit us and how it would need to be something  simple and appropriate, something they could understand.  So finally I created sheets of cardstock with a smiling pumpkin and "Jesus Loves YOU!" next to it. Voila!  I cut out about 100 of those and 100 with a pumpkin with a cross on it that had light shining through.  I didn't know which one I liked better so we used both.  We only used about half of them, so now we have more for next year.  I think we have a new tradition! 

These are the girls passing out candy and the "Jesus Loves YOU!" cards!  I didn't even get to pass most of them out.  The children loved passing them out themselves!  I am thankful that we had time to prepare for this and were able to find a practical way to share the love and light of Jesus last night! We also had a great conversation later when my son asked, "Do you think any of the cards made a difference? What if people just throw them away?"  I was able to share more about how it was like planting a seed and it wasn't up to us to make sure that it grows up all the way, but maybe it could help someone or they would remember it when they need to know God's love.  He prayed a sweet prayer at bedtime last night asking for God to help someone to read those words who was having a hard time and needed to hear that Jesus does love them!

Back to what our pastor said today... he said that we can remember these principles 1. Don't be superstitious because we have the light of God's Word, 2. be cautious and wise, 3. be a compassionate and winsome witness for Jesus.

In other words, however we choose to respond to Halloween, try to be a positive influence that would draw others to Christ.  There are many ways to respond to this day.  How can you do something to draw others to Jesus - the Light of the World?