Pumpkin Patch Pondering

I won’t be picking out a pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern. Yet, I am in hopes of eating pumpkin pie this fall.

At 75, I still remember an old nursery rhyme.

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater was published in a Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book in 1825.

‘Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.
Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had another and didn’t love her;
Peter learned to read and spell,
And then he loved her very well.’

I share the remainder of this devotion from a web site…

“I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
Ezekiel 36:25b-27

‘Tis pumpkin season and I love retelling this story.

A new Christian explained to a friend that being a Christian felt like being a pumpkin. God chooses you from the patch and washes away all the dirt you may have picked up in the field or from the other pumpkins. He exposes the chaotic mess in your heart – the tangled seeds of greed, doubt, and hatred. It’s yucky, but Jesus doesn’t mind getting messy. He reaches in and scoops out all that evil to make you clean. He then carves a smile on your face and fills you with His light for all the world to see.

Are you like a pumpkin?

How is God’s light shining through you?