Pineridge Blog
Usually Halloween is a chance to playfully greet the fear we all have of the unknown. Things aren’t nearly as scary when they are just the neighbor kids dressed in costumes. And who wouldn’t be happy to appease our deepest fears with a Snickers bar or a Twizzler? This year our fears of a highly contagious, invisible virus collide with our garden-variety fears, so that even the neighborhood children going door to door bring an increased level of worry.
Beneath the playful exterior of the holiday lurks the fear that we are more fragile than we like to think. The fear most of us feel and do not admit is a fear that there is something out there in the dark that can take everything away from us. Forget zombies and vampires the very real fears of disease, disaster and death are enough to keep anyone awake at night. Fears that are even more real in the season of COVID-19.
Halloween is really “All Hallows Eve,” an old English name for All Saints’ Day, which falls on November 1st , and is a celebration of the promise of Resurrection for those who have died. If you say “All Hallows Eve” really fast in a Cockney accent it comes out “ ’alloween.” In times past it was a chance to dress up like demons and devils that in the end have no power in the face of the holiness (hallowedness) of God. So All Saints Day is not just about laughing at what we fear most or trying to overcome our fears by our own will. All Saints Day is about having hope even our darkest of fears, trusting that God is faithful in all things. This year November 1st is on Sunday, so it will be a celebration of hope for those who have died and remind us all that we can trust the God of Resurrection.
The Apostle Paul, who himself was facing many challenges, not the least of which was his own failing health, wrote to the church in Rome, “If God is for us, who can be against us?... I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 31 & 39).