Jan 29, 2019
By Sarina Villalpando
Charles Schultz came up with many different Peanuts movies, many we watch on our screens for different holidays. Within many of these holiday favorites there is “The Great Pumpkin.” The basis of the movie is that the Peanuts gang celebrates Halloween and Linus waits for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. The Great Pumpkin can be seen as Santa or the Easter Bunny. Linus has a lot of faith that the Great Pumpkin will come and bring something special and Linus tries to get his friends on board as well. Linus also shows some boldness through his sharing with the others on the Peanuts—even though they make fun of him.
“Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you
may know how you ought to answer each person.”
—Colossians 4:5-6
Linus is a great example of how we should have an abundance of faith in Jesus. He shows that we should do all that we can to get others to have faith and believe in Jesus and that Jesus is coming back for us one day. It can be said that Linus was evangelizing and witnessing to his friends because he believed so much and wanted his friends to believe, too.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God
for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first
and also to the Greek.”
—Romans 1:16
We need to have the same desire to share Christ to our friends and the people around us just as Linus has with the Great Pumpkin. Linus didn’t care that his peers made fun of him. Jesus told us how we will suffer persecution because of Him, just as He was persecuted. He went through it all to save us; can’t we do the same? Linus was fully aware that the Great Pumpkin would bring special things to those who were at the pumpkin patch and he didn’t want anyone to be left out—which brings us to the question: are we sharing Christ with our friends or are we keeping Him to ourselves?
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God
is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
—Romans 6:23
Jesus deserves all our faith and all our love, and “The Great Pumpkin” reminds us that having faith is also sharing our faith.
“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith,
as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
—Romans 1:17
