I spent a good bit of time wrapping lights around this little decor on my kitchen desk. It may not look all that fabulous, and it may appear as if I have wasted my time here. After yesterday, I just had to get this done.

Yesterday, I went with my husband and some of the kids to do a nursing home ministry after our morning church service.  It is the Halloween season, but I was quite discouraged by all the death displayed. As my husband was speaking at one nursing home, he had skulls on each side of him as “decorations”.  In another home, there was a full skeleton at the snack bar.  Even though death is a very present reality at a nursing home, the displays felt sad.

We went to the nursing home that day to preach life.  We went to tell them about Jesus, the light of the world. We wanted them to know that their lives have value, that we see them as people of value — that we care enough to come and share and hopefully be an encouragement to them.  We wanted them to know that Jesus loves them.  Even in the midst of skulls and skeletons, we attempted to shine a light of life.

Halloween is so dark and disturbing, and I don’t believe Christians should be dabbling in the celebration or participating in the event of Halloween.  I just can’t call it a holiday.  So, what do we do?  We do what we always do in a fallen world that is full of sin and death.  We rejoice in the Light. We seek the Lord.  We proclaim his name and we become the people of the light.

So, despite the decorations in the neighborhoods around us and the death displays at the nursing homes, I have chosen to display some light.

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

1 Thessalonians 5:5