five card poker on saturday night

children are so beautiful.
halloween has been such an interesting holiday for me. when i was a child there was always a gathering at grandma and grandpa's. we dressed up... little red riding hood, laura ingalls wilder, princess, wind-up doll... so many fantastic, homemade costumes. then i reached the age when dressing up wasn't cool. then back again to costumes being cool. this is when i dressed up like a leper for the harvest party at church. looking back this was probably not the most caring or socially conscious thing i have ever been a part of.
last night... i dressed up like a fairy. i was thinking about dressing up as a "college student" because i was told i needed to dress up for work. my boss decided that might not fly, so i settled for a fairy.
but this is where the beautiful children come in. tiny little wolverines, princesses, pirates, fairies, various animals, and supermen with inflatable muscles. forty degrees is not optimal trick-or-treating weather and these were very cold children. but they were smiling. smiling, laughing, saying please and thank you.
when adults celebrate halloween, even young adults, it is an entirely different situation. no longer is dressing up about cute. it is now about sexy. what is it about costumes that cause people to lose their inhibitions? why is this so appealing? why can't we just be who we are, even if we don't really know who that is? why must there always be a mask? are we really just too afraid of who we really are? if there is no condemnation before christ then we are in no place to condemn one another.
let us take off the mask and be uninhibited with each other. let us be together, who we are. let us no longer depend on costumes to allow us to be ourselves. let us live together as jesus intended us to. let us figure out kingdom life together and live the incarnation of christ.