Have you ever read a few words that caused you to stop, pause and re-consider their significance for your own life? I recently had that experience with the following sentences in Deuteronomy 16:16-17.

Each year every man in Israel must celebrate these 3 festivals: the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Harvest, and the Festival of Shelters. On each of these occasions, all men must appear before the Lord your God at the place he chooses, but they must not appear before the Lord without a gift for him. All must give as they are able, according to the blessings given to them by the Lord your God.

I know Jews typically celebrate these festivals, but could they also be relevant for us Gentiles who believe in the finished word of Jesus? They’re obviously very important to God—but why are they so important? 

If we look more closely at these festivals, each one represents a designated time to pause and set aside all distractions to remember something God did for His people. Each festival is therefore a reminder of some great act of love He doesn’t want us to forget.

The 1st festival reminds us that God is our Redeemer. He is able to bring us out of slavery to the world and make us truly free! The 2nd festival honors the harvest of goodness that He provides for us as we work in our individual jobs. The 3rd festival celebrates the fact that our time here on earth is only temporary and our real home is in heaven with Him. But even here, He gives us times of success worth commemorating with great joy.

Since we tend to forget His active and loving involvement in our daily lives, I wonder if He set up the command to celebrate His love at least 3 times a year because He knows we human beings need it. If we actually devoted part of our budgets to funding 3 annual family weekend gatherings to celebrate His goodness to us, we might actually look and act more differently than the world around us. Those planned times of celebration might help us live above the rat race that consistently wants us to be miserable and grumble about how hard our lives are.

God so believes in the importance of these 3 set-apart celebration times that Deuteronomy 14:26 even says to designate part of the tithe we bring for these festivals to buy the foods/drinks we will use to celebrate with our households in His presence. It sounds like these God-ordained parties are actually statements of faith that He will continue to do what He has already done for us. So why not tap into the special blessings God gives us in each feast-time?