It’s that time of year again, you know, Halloween
When kids like to dress up as goblins and ghouls
Like it – or not, there’s a reason we’re keen
On the spooky – it’s not just for numpties or fools.

It’s thoroughly human to love a ghost story
Not bonkers to want to dress up as a witch
I get it that you like what’s scary or gory
That Halloween scratches where you want to itch.

Let’s face it, some things are both strange and mysterious
Deeper than we had imagined or thought
There’s more than our five senses tell us, I’m serious
If you’ve not considered it, believe me, you ought.

But here’s just a small thing you might like to ponder
I ask myself sometimes if we’ve got this right
We rave about the dark side, but tell me, I wonder
Is there not something powerful too – about the light?

What can seem just a little surprising and weird
Is our tendency to see God as boring and tame
We tend to think ‘stuffy old bloke with a beard’
But what if the reality makes that thought look lame?

What if God’s actually mysterious, exciting
That’d sure change the picture, to put it quite mild
To think God is active, and beckoning, inviting…
Us into relationship – that’s really quite wild.

Good bad and ugly, we’re a complicated mixture
It’s not surprising the dark side we want to embrace
But if God’s all-encompassing love is a fixture
In our messiness that’s pretty good news – it’s called grace.