Halloween is long gone, but the candy isn’t.  I can’t believe how much sugar is hanging out in our house and how much has been consumed in the past 10 days.  With the trick or treating done and the costumes packed away, the candy has been the only reminder of Halloween.  It’s off my radar and I’m on to Thanksgiving.

But then I noticed something on our hearth.  A sagging, pathetic Jack-o-Lantern whose smiling mouth was turning black.  So Jacky goes in the garbage, but he left an ugly slimy patch where he had been living.

I get that it’s just a rotten pumpkin and don’t want to make a big stretch, but the lesson here is that anything left unattended and forgotten will decay and leave a mess behind.  It’s true for friendships, marriages, checkbooks, credit limits, relationships with children or family, our health and most certainly our spiritual well-being.  If you just stop paying attention, you suddenly realize that you have a mess on your hands.  And we’ve all tried to clean up a mess like that…..after the fact.  Some are not so simple to clean up.  The best solution is not to let the mess happen.

Maybe there’s something you’ve left unattended.  I hope you find a way to work on it today before it turns into something difficult to fix.  And may you see God’s blessing as you do the hard work of making it right.