We mask our fear of death
with faces of silliness, or power, or both -
attempting to laugh off or scare away
the dread knot of anxiety that fills our hearts and souls.

Pumpkins with crooked grins and flickering flames
stand-in for all those things which really keep us up at night -
the loss of life or love or sanity,
the slowing step or fading memory
that remind us that we too will one day go
where those who have died have already gone.

And where is that, exactly?
Where is that “far country?”
And do we really want to go there?
On this night we approach with timid step
the house where God’s deepest and most enigmatic mystery dwells.
We knock and quake behind our masks and hold out our hands and beg,
“Trick or treat?” -
whilst deep within we hold on to the fervent hope
that all the things we have heard and believed about a God of grace are true.

Delmer Chilton