Meanne M. Mijares
I know it should be spelled as Halloween. But yes, I spelled it unintentionally.
Pretty soon, the world will be celebrating Halloween. All places the world over will be decked with vampires, witches, ghouls, devils with their red hot horns and tridents plus other scary creatures not to mention the presence of eerie looking cobwebs, spiders for witches to create their custom made brews and concoctions to put a hex on someone as they chant weird and evil spells. And all media will feature horror and ghost stories (whether true or urban legend) on print, television, internet, radio and even blogs. When I was a little girl, I would cry when my uncles, aunties and cousins tell those awful scary stories from the province that I have a hard time sleeping at night with the lights on. Then my late grandmother taught me to just say, puh-puh! And I no longer feel scared.
These aren’t things worth looking forward to as we celebrate Halloween. Except for the trick or treat stuff, of course.
There is one symbol during the Halloween season that grabbed my attention, though. It is the Jack’O Lantern because of its spiritual significance. It erased the scary notions and impressions I used to have about Halloween. Surprisingly, it is found in the Bible.
God picks you from the patch and brings you in (John 15:16)
Then washes all the dirt of you (2 Corinthians 5:17)
He opens you up and scoops out all the yucky stuff. He removes the seeds of doubt, hate greed, etc. (Romans 6:6)
Then He carves you with a smiling new face (Psalm 71:23)
And He puts His light inside you to shine for all the world to see (Matthew 5:16)
We are all like pumpkins from the dirty and muddy plot of land. In short, we are poor sinners who always struggle with our faults, imperfections and weaknesses, finding difficulty to overcome them. But there is a God who makes a difference in our lives without fail. A God Who dwelt among us, suffered and died to redeem us. Because of Him, we are living examples of His light and we owe Him our invisible halos during life but will be seen by many shining brightly once we have accomplished and invested ourselves in doing little and big good deeds, works and actions day by day throughout our lifetime. He conquered and won the victory for us a long time ago. But we should keep going and keep doing our best to polish and make our halos shine in order to preserve the gains He made for our salvation. We should not be frightened of those scary stuff and images during Halloween. What is most terrifying is when we fail to repent for our sins and suffer the consequences eternally. It might be already too late it becomes even worst. So, think and do something about it-now.
So instead of saying Happy Halloween, let us say Happy Halo-Win!
