we’re drinking tea, the spicy kind that smells of autumn and outside, trent collects colors from the garden. orange pumpkins and green zucchinis and tomatoes, red with taste.
we’re sipping autumn in clay mugs and talking about halloween. my friend, when she was little, handed out slips of paper for reformation day and i hid behind curtains and bobbed for apples with my siblings. because trick or treating was wrong. we’re not sure how it was wrong but we stir in some sugar and the tea makes it better.
our children play on the floor, toys between them and i wonder at the fear of the Lord and what it means to live in perfect love. and how to perfectly love your neighbor, and is it by handing out slips of paper that talk about the saints, or hiding behind curtains? and is trick or treating evil, and isn’t the christmas tree, also, and don’t most pagan events coincide with christian holidays? and how to do the Christian life in this very gray world?
trent grew up dressing up, his mom taking them around to the elderly to cheer them up. they would sing songs and the elderly would clap and the tea is spicy and this sits right with me. this bringing cheer to others, this living in perfect love, and perfect love casting out fear.
fall fades with the sun, the harvest all picked and piled, its beauty useless unless eaten. i look at our children falling over tired, cookie crumbs on their lips and the tea, loose leaf in the bottom of our mugs and i decide to raise them fearless. to let God redeem october 31. to walk my boys door to door, dressed as dragon and chicken, to show the love that lengthens limb and loosens tongue and makes us radiate with hope.
because it’s not about a holiday. it’s about God. and he shines brighter than any jack-o-lantern and i have nothing to fear.
for God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 tim. 1:7)
(linking with laura, jen and michelle)
(tomorrow evening, on halloween, we will be taking our boys to the local nursing home where they’ll hand out candies, and then off to Grandma’s, where they’ll get candy :)…)
-what about you guys? what are your thoughts on this controversial day? love to you all…