https://odb.org/MY/2021/10/31/redeeming-the-season
Autumn is remembered in the States as a period of decorating pumpkins that turned into Halloween in the 1800s as they harvested the pumpkins during autumn and made the harvesting into a community celebration. As a result, autumn seemed to celebrate death and its macabre and gruesome ways which the author of today’s ODB spoke about. Thus an attempt was made to celebrate autumn with gratefulness for God’s work in nature.
While we generally do not celebrate Halloween here, I think the effort to redeem a season should be commended. Chinese Christians here have traditionally replaced the All Souls Day of going to the graves of our departed ones to pay our respects and pray to our ancestors with a similar practice at about the same time but to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ as that period is also the Good Friday and Easter season to us here. So we have redeemed that season with a practice that is relevant to us as believers in Christ without needing to comply with the tradition of praying to our ancestors which goes against the beliefs of our faith. Basically, we do not believe that the living can communicate with the departed in any way or form and we believe that the only way we can see our departed loved ones again is when Christ reunites us all who believed in Him on the day of the Lord.
Is there something in our lives that we can redeem and transform into something meaningful in Christ? Perhaps a habit of going to clubs at weekends to a Christian fellowship of worship and sharing? Maybe attending church worship service on a Sunday morning rather than a round of 18 holes at the golf course or joining prayer meetings on a Saturday evening than a few hours at the badminton courts? Not at the level of replacing All Souls Day or trying to give a better meaning to Haloween but a change in our own personal habits and practices for Christ. Remember that we will all live for all eternity and thus anything that is not of eternal value will not be of use to us in eternity. Set our eyes on the eternal as the temporal will pass and wither away.
Ronnie's Thoughts 