The Pumpkin Gospel

Day One Picked Out Pumpkins

I taught preschool for four years while I worked on my secondary teaching credential and I always loved decorating the classroom for holidays and seasonal changes.  I still love decorating my house and office so much so that people expect it.  At home, my nephew loves getting involved.  Before visiting the pumpkin patch earlier this month he came up with the idea that he wanted to create a pumpkin snowman for our autumn holiday décor this year.  And I wouldn’t be his favorite auntie if I didn’t succumb to all his bouts of creativity.  So we picked up 3 pumpkins, took a walk at the park looking for branches that would become the snowman’s arms (Dollar helped), bought some white acrylic paint and started creating.

Day two Painting,

Looking for snowman arms at local park, 

Dollar helps in the search

I bought a book last year called the “Pumpkin Gospel” at my local Christian store (my nephew knows the book as the instructions for carving a pumpkin).  The book actually uses the pumpkin carving process as a simile (being a Christian is just like a pumpkin) describing how God individually picks out each pumpkin from the patch, washes off the dirt, removes the “yucky stuff” from the inside, carves a new face and fills each pumpkin with His light – creating happy, light filled jack-o-lanterns.  He loves the story because in addition to the well explained carving instructions the book glows in the dark!  And I love the fact that I get to share God with him in an age appropriate seasonally fitting way.

Day three cleaning out stinky insides,

Carving new face (following plans by pumpkin architect)

Finished product (waiting for tonight to light up the snowman)

So we read the book a few times throughout the week and then carved the newly, painted, white snowman head to compete his design.  Once everything was combined we had the most beautiful pumpkin snowman and quite a proud artist beside it.  He’s the most exceptional kid!  The first thing that he wanted to be when he grows up was an engineer (it’s impressive that at 4 years old he knew what that was)! But recently at the ripe age of 6 he changed his mind and now wants to be an architect because he claims he’s extremely good at drawing plans (SMILE). In fact, he drew plans of what the snowman should look like and after producing many different faces he finally decided on one.  Seriously this kid makes me proud to be his auntie!!!   

Shine the light of Jesus!