This comes from an explanation of the Feasts that God instituted for His people which Keren Hannah Pryor wrote in her email series, Appointments With God. The Feasts are appointed times for us to come to God and “meet with the Beloved of our soul”. They are His call to holiness. I loved the way she described the cycles of times and seasons and the unchanging nature of celebrating the Feasts every year.
As we walk in His cycles we do not find ourselves spinning giddily round in circles getting nowhere. Rather, we discover that we gradually spiral upward, ever higher and stronger. Our spirits grow according to our Father’s design and draw closer and closer to His Presence.
At the conclusion of each annual cycle we should not be where we were, or even who we were, at the start. On a spiritual journey it is the person who changes, not necessarily the scenery. When we have accepted His invitation, kept the appointment, and met with the Beloved of our soul, we should be moving steadily nearer to our destination and accomplishing more fully our purpose of being the unique and precious person He created us to be. We will then shine forth more of His image, for His Name’s sake.
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I believe we can live this kind of growing, changing life without celebrating the Feasts the way God called the Jews to celebrate them, but I believe it helps us to pull our focus onto the things of God and off of the ordinary things of life when we acknowledge the time and the season that God ordained for His chosen people to observe. And it is good for our children to hear us rehearse the mighty acts of God in our own lives.
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
