'United Ponies'
30 x 40 Oil on Canvas
© Laurie Justus Pace Graphics One Design 2009
The Painting: This is a commissioned painting for a family in the United Kingdom, hence the name United Ponies. They wanted a vertical painting with my signature style of painted pulls and requested softer colors and lots of greens. Can you find all the horses?
The Thought: We had Tink yesterday. I will try and post some pictures later this week. Rainy day again yesterday too. God is restoring our area back from the seven year drought we have been in.
On Sunday our youngest daughter carved a pumpkin with one of her friends for the carving contest at the high school. I took some pictures of that too and they are still on my camera...so you may get caught up suddenly with all of them. Normally at this time of year Terry and I make up a big batch of chili, usually our first for the winter, and we have a gourd carving party. I miss it. We use to live in the country and we would put my big art tables outside on the back porch and have several big trash cans for the mess and friends would come and carve their gourds and eat chili. I was always one of the judges for the final ribbons. We take the carving seriously like an art. Terry is actually pretty darn good at it.
Okay and that brings me back to "Halloween". Our 17 year old daughter is battering us about Halloween. As you remember she is our foster/adopt daughter that we welcomed into our family this summer. I am doing research to educate her this evening on where the holiday came from.
Here are things I found on the internet...true or not I do not know but I am reading and making my decisions based on the the extent of what I find there for factual pieces and then to my Bible.
1. Halloween was introduced into the professing Christian world centuries after the death of the apostles, yet it was celebrated by the pagans centuries before the New Testament Church was founded.
2. Halloween came to America through Scottish and Irish Folk customs and can be traced back to a paganistic time.
3. Nov 1st is Satan's day...did you know that? That is why Halloween is referred to as All Saint's Eve. The Druid priests believed the immortality of the soul passed from one body to another as death. They believed that on the last night of the old year (Oct 31) the lord of death gathered the souls of all those who had died during the year and had been condemned to live in the bodies of animals, to decree what forms they would inhabit for the next year.
Another article said the people believed in fairies and that the spirits of the dead wandered around looking for bodies to inhabit. Since the living did not want to be possessed by spirits, they dressed up in costumes and paraded around making loud noise to frighten away the spirits.
4. Halloween was celebrated to preserve in the minds of the people that this was a false doctrine of the immortality of the soul, to believe the dead are not really dead. Almost all heathen nations had days to honor the dead. The date of October 31 is the eve before Nov 1. All celebrations began at sunset in anticipation of the great day of Nov 1st, dedicated to the lord of the dead.
5. Who was this lord of the death? Matthew 22:31-32 "But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." The dead do not serve God. Paul in the book of Hebrews speaks of "him that had the power of death, that is the devil" Hebrews 2:14. So the devil, Satan, was lord or master of the dead.
Makes me wonder how we can call Halloween All Hallows or All Saints' Day and celebrate it in the Christian church. Did you know that Martin Luther posted his epoch thesis on the door of the church at Wittenberg on Halloween? He chose that night because he knew the town people would be coming to church.
The Catholic Church took over the Satanistic day and made it All Hallow Eve where all the saints of the Catholic Church were honored. From this grew a custom where people would go door to door on Nov 2 and request small cakes in exchange of a promise of prayers for the dead relatives from their families.
Now the candy. In Ireland it was customary to have a procession led by a man in a white robe wearing a horse-head mask. The procession levied a contribution from the farmers in the name of an old Druid god. If a farmer did not give liberally with gifts, they were tricked with the curse of bad crops in the next year. So the act of trick or treating comes out of Ireland and the Druid paganism.
The Jack-o-lantern comes from Irish Folklore about a man named Jack who tricked the devil into climbing a tree. Once the devil was in the tree, Jack carved a cross on the trunk, preventing the devil from coming down. The devil then made deal with Jack not to allow Jack into hell after he died IF Jack would remove the cross from the tree. After Jack died, he was not taken into heaven and he was not allowed into hell, so he was forced to wander around the earth with a single candle to light his way. He kept the candle in a turnip to keep it burning longer. When the Irish came to America in the 1800's they adopted the pumpkin instead of the turnip. They also brought the idea that the black cat was considered by some to be reincarnated spirits who had prophetic abilities.
The Bible speaks negatively about occultist practices, spirits and witchcraft and witches. It condemns the practice as well as the people involved in it. As Believers we are to have nothing to do with the occult. It is up to you and your family how you respond to Halloween.
Our home is not decorated, but our porch light will be on...the only ghost that lives in our home is the Holy Ghost. He welcomes anyone to open their hearts to His love and peace.
Laurie
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