One thing I have had a growing interest in this year is learning more about God’s holy days and festivals. There are seven appointed times of the year: Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of First Fruits and Pentecost (spring holy days), Day of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Feast of Tabernacles (fall holy days). While the spring holy days prophesied the death, burial and resurrection of Christ as well as when the Holy Spirit was given, the fall holy festivals also prophesy future events.
So that this blog can remain relatively short, I encourage everyone to research more about these days and the meanings behind them.
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Passover
Last spring I celebrated the Passover feast in Sri Lanka (with the help of my team) for the first time. My teammate Alyssa shared what she knew about the Seder meal, Kathryn made bread without yeast, Kristine helped cook the food, we read through the traditional blessings, discussed the symbolism of the table items, read through the gospels as it pertained to the final supper and had communion together. It was a beautiful thing and was a huge encouragement to me in my walk of truth with the Lord.
This fall, I was gifted Team Taza! We got together on the Day of Trumpets, Day of Atonement and on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles to celebrate and acknowledge them.
Day of Trumpets
The blowing of the trumpets signifies a solemn time of preparation for the Day of Atonement; this preparation time is called “Ten Days of Repentance” or the “Days of Awe.” The trumpet sound is an alarm of sorts and can be understood as a call to introspection and repentance- to search our hearts and renew a right spirit within us.
We celebrated by reading the scriptures, making a shout and blowing little candy whistles we found in a previous country. This day is also a Sabbath day of rest.
Day of Atonement
This day represents an atonement for our sins. Christ’s sacrifice was made on the cross, but as his role as the high priest of heaven Christ has gone into the holy of Holies (heaven) interceding for our sins until the time of judgment when he places the sins He bore on the author of all sins, the devil, who will be held accountable (this is demonstrated in the illustration of the scapegoat in Lev. 16:7-10, 20-22).
We celebrated by reading the scriptures and personally answering a list of reflective questions on this last year and the coming year. This is also a Sabbath and day of fasting. (*This fast was so hard, we had so many opportunities for great food!)
Feast of Tabernacles
This is an eight day festival of rejoicing over the blessing of God’s provision and care for our lives (Deut. 16:14-15). During this time temporary dwellings are constructed in which people will eat, sleep or hang out in during the festival. Also the “four species” are gathered (the four species are represented in four physical items rare to the region that signify a humble heart, spiritual backbone, enlightenment and prayer). The Feast was known as the ‘Season of joy.’ John 1:14 is read to remember when Jesus dwelled with us as well as the promise of future dwelling (Rev. 21:3). A prophecy of future celebration of this feast is also read:
“Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.” – Zechariah 14:16
We celebrated by having a long worship session (of which I played guitar! What?), celebrated some things the Lord has done this year by sharing stories of God’s glory, throwing pillows, jumping up and down and shouting, reading the scriptures and building a fort! This is also a Sabbath day.
Fun fact: the power was out the whole day we built this so we used our headlamps! Thank goodness for gas stovetops so we could cook and home hacks like the one we used to turn a water jug into a lantern! We also had our one woman church visit us early, so she and her daughter had dinner with us in the fort.
God is good!
