In God We Trust...

I have come to realize that my trust in technology or heavy reliance on "it" has as of recent, our computer crash and how much life and time has been invested into "it". The painful reminder is that I have lost many hours of sleep and patience with "it". This brings me to my last point of great importance: look to Jesus, the author and perfector of my faith for everything. In Him I/we have life, and infinite amounts of life at that to be in His presence forever. Without Jesus nothing really matters. There are people who do not have a roof over their heads, food on the table, families to love, and most importantly, a life in Jesus/salvation. May our trust be in Him and not in "it".

Halloween or Not to Halloween...

So, I must begin this with saying that as a kid I loved going door to door to get candy and say the famous words, "trick-or-treat". It was not until recently that I thought it might be good to talk about what we will do as a family with our kids especially when looking at it all whether Easter, Christmas, Halloween etc.

There are basically three perspectives and I have to say that we have close friends who hold to all three currently and some have jumped through all three hoops through the years depending on how the wind might blow. So I state our stance not to get them all to freak out on each other and us, but to look critically at why we all do things not just because it seems right, but also because some things that appear to be right are actually fundamentalist sepratist from culture and not gospel driven even if they are done with good intentions.

The first one, is Halloween is from the devil and no one in their right mind especially in the Christian realm should celebrate Halloween. The second, is similar, but instead of staying home locking the doors, turning off the lights so that no kids come for candy to your house either, this group has harvest parties or church basement parties dressed up like your favorite Bible hero. Third, you go and get a good scary costume and get candy. Now to be fair, I somewhat understand where everyone comes from, but my wife and I chose option #4 which is taking our kid/kids out to get candy dressed up not as a demon or witch, but as something that could open a can of whoop-ass on the bad and creepy guys like a ninja? We also figure that it is a teaching time for us as parents who love Jesus and want to be in culture and on mission and demonstrate that value to our little ones. We began to ponder and study the last few years as to how redeem it for Jesus and so this was not just a quick knee jerk reaction or trying to prooftext waht we wanted to do. I will say that we had a great time as family this year, and spend time after and during with friends who love Jesus as well as got to see others other there who definitely don't know Jesus, but gives us opportunities to step into their world and hopefully be Gospel minded. My favorite part of the night was my Mary Grace and I sitting up in our bedroom talking and laughing about how fun it was and how silly and cute Shepard was at the end of the night when he said, "Heavy "(speaking of his pumpkin fully of candy) and then right after it, "Home, Shep tired." So good.

Let us redeem our culture and better understand how to bring light in the darkness.
Jared

"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can not overcome it." (John 1:5)