Courageous Joy

Being a Christian is like being a Pumpkin

Those of you who have ever journeyed through a book of the Bible with me, will find it easy to imagine how excited I got about this. It wont' surprise you to know, either, that I did a considerable amount of improvising as we went along and I got excited about the topic. LOL

I reminded the kids of when we went to the pumpkin patch (such as it was) and picked out our pumpkin.

God goes into the patch and CHOOSES us!!! He lovingly seperates us from the world (vine) and cleans the dirt off of us.

Then Cy cut the top while we talked about how God cleans us up inside and outside....Our children had never seen the inside of a pumpkin and were quite surprised at what they found. This naturally led us to talk about how we are full of sin before we know Jesus. He cleans and scoops and scrapes the gunk out of our lives. We talked about what the scraping may feel like and how some of the gunk was HARD to get loose. Some mentioned that it STUNK and we talked about how sin can cause our lives to stink! OR we can give off the fragrance of our Savior. I was so glad that the older three boys were around to help us with this. Josiah got called in early to work, but he told them that he was busy this morning and couldn't come.



We carved the name of Jesus on our pumpkin...just as Jesus puts HIS NAME on our hearts....and put the light inside. Jesus puts His light deep inside of us and it grows and becomes brighter until others can see His light through His name/impression in our lives.

We lit them inside so the kids could see - and they were impressed.

The object lesson isn't done - imagine how much brighter it will be tonight....and we'll discuss how the light of Jesus will shine brightest in darkness....and how our "differences" become more apparent the brighter His light shines in our lives. God desires for us to be LIGHT to our world...and a peculiar priesthood.

BTW, given my history with knives I know there was a bit of concern...all fingers are in tact.

This pumpkin was a joint project

Arielle chose to carve a cross

Nolan and Zander with the pumpkin Nolan carved...Zander gave up after about the 3rd near miss with his finger....He got tired of my screeching. {G}

We even did a bit of phonics with the letters! {G}

Stacia insisted on participating. She DOES wear clothes...but not when food is around!!! We were NOT surprised that she insisted on eating the pumpkin...though the diaper this afternoon was a bit of a surprise. ::snort:: Now how do I put this lid back on??