We had some fine festivities over the weekend. We celebrated Pentecost on Sunday and Memorial Day on Monday.
For Pentecost (Shavuot), I had planned to bake two loaves of bread to represent the two men becoming One New Man in Christ. One loaf represented the Jewish believers in Yeshua and the other loaf represented Gentile believers in Jesus, and we each ate some bread from each loaf.
I got this idea from reading Sid Roth’s book The Incomplete Church. He explains the Messianic significance of the Feast of Shavuot. It was fulfilled in the Day of Pentecost recorded in Acts 2:4 when the Holy Spirit was given and tongues of fire appeared on the heads of the disciples in the Upper Room as they waited to receive the Promise of the Father. Jews celebrate Shavuot as the festival of the giving of the Law.
We can celebrate it as the giving and preservation of the Bible and the fulfillment of the Law and the writing of the Law on our hearts as the Holy Spirit comes in and fills us and gives us the power to overcome our tendency toward evil. God associates the giving of the Holy Spirit with the placing of His Law in our hearts.
Sid tells us to pray and ask the Holy Spirit how He wants us to celebrate the feasts each year. So we prayed, and I felt that we should bake the two loaves and talk about the significance of Jewish and Gentile believers coming together and pray for that to happen. I also felt like I should read from John G. Lake’s book about the way the Holy Spirit leads us by our spirit. Then I asked Shawn to put something together, and he came up with reading out portions of the Old Testament that priests had read out to the people of Israel. And then we had Anna lead us in worship. It turned out very well, and we enjoyed intimate fellowship with the Lord and with each other.
Then the next day, the little people got to have some fun. To celebrate Memorial Day, I decided that we would eat picnic food inside. We got some specially decorated patriotic brownies. I made an American flag-shaped cookie and Katie decorated it. We had hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob and baked beans.
This is how Katie decorated it at first, with a white star in the field of blueberries.
Then she sliced some strawberries and filled in the star with red. I thought it looked very patriotic and yummy. It tasted delicious. We make it by pressing out sugar cookie dough on a cookie sheet in the shape of a rectangle. Then we make a frosting for it by mixing 1 and 1/2 cups of powdered sugar with Philadelphia Cream Cheese. We spread that over the cookie after it cools. Then we lay the fruit on top. It is a variation on our fruit pizza and tastes just about as good.
Fiona led the little ones in making flags, so we had a nice little lesson about how many stars and stripes are on the flag and why.
Some of us dressed in red, white and blue. We do that pretty often, so I didn’t make a big deal about it.
We talked about the reason we celebrate Memorial Day, to honor those who fought and died for our country.
Over all of the festivities was the air of excitement that came from knowing that Gary would be coming home Wednesday. I felt a relief that things are changing for the good, and we will all be together in a place that is better for us than ever before.
In the end, all of this celebrating has left us with a lot to think about and a lot to be thankful for.
"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
