This may be a small thing. I had always thought of the Feasts on the Jewish calendar to be a time of celebration and party, basically joy and fun. But over and over again during the commandments, I see that the Lord admonishes the Israelites that "this is a solemn thing." I had never thought of the Feasts like that. Granted, they were a time of remembrance and religious ceremony, but wasn't it also a time of eating and celebration and raucous laughter? I am not saying that the solemnity of the feast was to cancel out this jubilant air, but I suppose I had never considered how important these feasts were to the Lord. After all, they were to remind Israel of a few things: God's provision in the desert, God's provision each year in the harvest, God's provision for the atonement of Israel's sin... They were certainly to feast and fete and favor, but they were to above all remember and to honor the Lord their God. The Feasts were a solemn thing unto the Lord.
I wonder: do we have anything like that in the Church? We have communion, but I've noticed that churches use varying emphasis and practices in regards to communion. Communion is certainly a time of remembrance and solemnity, but is there also celebration? Are we too solemn? We certainly fellowship and eat and laugh and "feast", but do we solemnly remember why we gather for fellowship and feasting beyond the short blessing prayer over the food? Might there have been a reason God didn't institute feasts with us? I don't really have an answer to the last one.
I think, though, that this is a good principle to practice in our own faith: to celebrate and to remember and honor the Lord. How would we do it? The Bible admonishes us that everything we do, we do unto the Lord. If we do that, do we need festivals or a tradition to make us feast Him?
Tomorrow's Reading: Leviticus 24:1-23
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