Celebrating Tabernacles

The Feast of Tabernacles has come early this year and once again I’m pausing my “following Jesus” series to post something I wrote last year about the Feast, though slightly revised, because it still applies. Here it is:

I love this feast. Every year our church celebrates it for eight days and nights. It’s one of seven feasts of the Lord and commemorates the time when the Jews wandered in the wilderness for forty years and literally tabernacled with God. But it’s so much more. It speaks prophetically of a time when Jesus will return and tabernacle with us here on earth, and set up His thousand year reign. Of course the Spirit of God already tabernacles with all true believers, but the Feast references the physical return of our Lord.

For the past few days as I praised and worshiped, as the dancers whirled around with their colored flags, as the breathtakingly beautiful banners were paraded through the sanctuary declaring Jesus as “Soon Coming King,” “Lord of Lords,” and “Lion of Judah” it was easy to envision the splendor, or at least a small part of the splendor and pageantry and glory that will accompany the event that all Christendom awaits. And when I glimpsed it, it created such a longing in my heart it actually hurt. Scripture tells us that all creation groans for His return (Romans 8:22-23). I think all our hearts groaned as we celebrated. I could see it on the faces around me. They groaned because there was such a sweet presence of the Lord in the sanctuary. And while it was wonderful, we knew it was but a foretaste of things to come, a foretaste when once again God will tabernacle with man, and we would have to wait. I was never good at waiting.

But the Feast is doing something else for me. It’s reminding me of the here and now, and how important it is to live life fully for the Lord. He is to be our number one priority followed closely by the people He has placed in our lives. He has a plan and purpose for each of us, and we have only one lifetime to get it right. We need to take this seriously because every day we don’t, is a day lost.

“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God . . . And he had on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:11-16).

Oh, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Until next time,

Sylvia