God commanded Moses to instruct the Israelites to keep the Feast of Tabernacles:
You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 23:40-43
The Jewish people still celebrate this feast in Jerusalem. We are not native Israelites, but we are grafted in and wanted to build a booth (Sukkot Sue-coat) and celebrate this feast so our children would remember God’s mighty hand during the Exodus and wanderings in the Wilderness. The timeliness of this feast fit perfectly into this year’s Biblical history studies. My dear friend and I collaborated ideas from suggestions we read on how Christians can celebrate this Feast.
I did not take a lot of pictures during the festivities as I wanted to focus on the events, prayers and blessings. I did take a picture of our Sukkot.
We all said a prayer and blessing to God before entering our Sukkot. My friend and I took turns lighting the candles on the table. One candle represents creation and the other represents redemption. Then we all had a seat and began eating our traditional American Thanksgiving feast. We had turkey, gravy, dressing, potatoes, squash, bread, cranberries, bread, and milk and honey cake for dessert.
And a yummy fruit platter! It was so beautiful I had to take a picture of it. Notice the Star Fruit! This was the first time we all had this fruit.
After our meal we had a prayer and blessing for God’s bountiful provisions.
The next part of our ceremony was the water offering. Three-year-old Mikey poured out a picture of water onto the ground and Sweetness recited this scripture.
And in that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation. Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of Salvation. Isaiah 12:1-3
We offered a blessing of thanks to God for the rain that causes seedtime and harvest and then we each told God what we are thankful for.
Lastly the children took their Lulav’s ...
And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. Leviticus 23:40
… and ran jubilantly around the Sukkot seven times. I was so blessed by their joyful inhibited praise before the Lord. I think King David would have been delighted. We asked them to sing a song afterwards in which they breathlessly complied.
Our final blessing and scripture was recited before calling it an evening.
Zechariah 14:16
And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of host, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.
Hope to see you there!
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