{"id":4988,"date":"2025-10-24T09:21:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T13:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=4988"},"modified":"2025-10-24T09:21:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T13:21:05","slug":"no-bones-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/24\/no-bones-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"No Bones About It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

If you assess the national landscape of outdoor Halloween decorations, Skelly is hard to miss.

Skelly the Skeleton, who debuted at Home Depot in 2020, is a whopping 12 feet tall, \u201cbig enough to look down on a basketball hoop,\u201d as his creators put it. The team that brought him to life, so to speak, originally cherished only modest sales expectations \u2013 perhaps a one or two-year run.

But Home Depot has since realized they have a cultural phenomenon on their hands.

Skelly has become the Tickle-Me-Elmo of yard decorations \u2013 the must-have holiday purchase that the home improvement store has been unable to keep on the shelves.

Part of the monstrosity\u2019s spooky charm is reflected in the creativity of those who put him on display.

Someone not far from where we live has dressed one Skelly as Taylor Swift and another as Travis Kelce \u2013 presumably the wealthiest, most influential un-dead couple on the planet.

Others leave their skeletons up year-round, rotating Skelly\u2019s identity from that of a pilgrim to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or a summer beach bum. You can even enhance your front-yard drama with Skelly\u2019s official skeletal pet dog or cat.

For those who simply must outdo their neighbors, now there\u2019s Ultra Skelly, who is app-controlled and fully animated. This latest and greatest skeleton is equipped with a glowing interior, Bluetooth-enabled voice effects, and eyes that can track the movements of five-year-olds who want nothing more than a Snickers bars. Not that any of those children will end up in therapy 25 years from now.

When asked how his team decided to create Skelly, Lance Allen, Home Depot\u2019s senior merchant of holiday decorations, insists, \u201cEverybody loves a skeleton.\u201d

That is such an interesting statement.\u00a0

Skeletons, when you think about it, are a dramatic reminder that (apart from the inbreaking of the Apocalypse) not one of us is going to get out of this world alive.

What is the meaning of life? One answer is that the meaning of life is that life comes to an end. If you have a healthy heart, it will beat about 100,000 times over the next 24 hours.\u00a0But one day your heart will stop.\u00a0One day you, too, will be nothing but a skeleton \u2013 although presumably not standing in your neighbor\u2019s yard dressed like Peyton Manning.

We all live under the tyranny of an approaching expiration date.

Historically, some cultures (medieval Europe comes to mind) have been obsessively focused on the reality of death. Skeletons were front and center in the art of the Middle Ages. Paintings provided vivid depictions of the conditions that might be awaiting us in the grave.

So, what do we need to know<\/em> right now?

We need to know if God is real.\u00a0And if God actually cares.\u00a0And if God can do something about this intractable, inevitable, overwhelming enemy called death.

At the very heart of Christianity, of course, is the claim that Jesus did something about death on the first Easter morning.\u00a0His resurrection is like a supernatural down payment guaranteeing the ultimate resurrection of his followers.

Centuries ago, churches began to make an interesting public statement in support of that idea.\u00a0They began to bury their dead right next to the church.\u00a0Gone were scary cemeteries down the road or in the woods.

Some churches (such as St. Peter\u2019s in Rome and Westminster Abbey in London) have even buried the faithful in vaults under the floor.\u00a0

Day by day, worshippers might walk past the graves of those who used to sit alongside them.\u00a0Or they may literally stand on those who have gone before.

Isn\u2019t that kind of creepy?\u00a0

Many would suggest it\u2019s just the opposite.\u00a0Followers of Jesus are actually making a statement:

We\u2019re not afraid of death any more.\u00a0We can meet with confidence in the presence of the deceased.<\/em>

The apostle Paul declares: \u201c\u2019Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?\u2019\u2026Thanks be to God!\u00a0He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ\u201d (I Corinthians 15:54-57).

There is a God whose love transcends the worst thing that can ever happen to us.

In response to which we can only say:

Take that, Ultra Skelly<\/em>.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here If you assess the national landscape of outdoor Halloween decorations, Skelly is hard to miss. Skelly the Skeleton, who debuted at Home Depot in 2020, is a whopping 12 feet tall, \u201cbig enough to look down on a basketball hoop,\u201d as his creators put it. The team that brought him to… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4989,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[450,650,207,1024],"class_list":["post-4988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death","tag-halloween","tag-resurrection","tag-skeletons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4990,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4988\/revisions\/4990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}