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David Ashby's avatar

You rightly highlight the importance of seasons and cycles, with annual festivals almost serving as a template to structure our life. You mention the Christian aspects of our calendar, but I think it’s critical to also emphasize the Jewish festival calendar and its relationship to Christianity. In fact, I see the Jewish festivals and holy days as a rehearsal for the most significant Christian celebrations.

The Jewish religious year started in the Spring with Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits celebrations all falling in the week of the initial barley harvest. For a Jew, the Passover recounted the last of the ten plagues in Egypt, the death of the firstborn son. Just as the Israelites were saved through applying the blood of a spotless lamb on the doorpost of their houses, so Christians are saved through the blood of their Passover Lamb, Jesus, liberating them from sin.

Unleavened Bread reminds us of the hasty exodus of Israel from their Egyptian slave masters — so quickly leaving that the bread they carried with them had to be made without yeast. This reminds Christians of the importance of sincerity and removing sin from one’s life.

And Firstfruits reminded the Jews of God’s provision and the importance of thankfulness as they raised the first sheaf of the barley harvest to the Lord. Christians recognize this as the resurrection of Christ from the grave, the Firstfruits of a New Covenant between God and man.

Fifty days later comes the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost. To the Jew, it was a celebration of the giving of the law and the beginning of the wheat harvest. To the Christian, it was the giving of the Spirit to the Church.

Then, in the Fall harvest time, we see another few weeks of Jewish festivals beginning with the Day of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the civil year in the Jewish calendar), followed by Atonement (Yom Kippur), ending in the Feast of Booths, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot).

To the Christian, they represent not only the spiritual atonement of Christ and the dwelling of God with man, but also the future hope of Christ’s return and the ultimate redemption of our bodies and the physical dwelling of God with man in the New Jerusalem.

It is a beautiful cycle that most modern Christians don’t fully appreciate, but it is a continual reminder of God’s provision, not just for man’s physical needs and the preservation of the Jewish people, but also for man’s deepest spiritual needs and God’s desire to restore the fellowship that Adam lost with him in the Garden.

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