“Observe the Festival of Unleavened Bread. You are to eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, as I commanded you, for you came out of Egypt in the month of Abib. . .Observe the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the agricultural year. Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory. No one will covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the Lord your God. Do not present the blood for my sacrifice with anything unleavened. The sacrifice of the Passover Festival must not remain until morning.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are eleven federal holidays in the U.S. The oldest four are Christmas, New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Independence Day. Labor Day, Memorial Day, and Veteran’s Day were added later. Three of the days (Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Columbus) celebrate specific individuals. More recently, progressives have sought to convert Washington’s and Columbus’ days to President’s Day and Indigenous People’s Day, but neither of those are officially federal holidays. The latest addition to the list is Juneteenth, celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation. What we celebrate as a people helps to define for us what we consider most important. As God continues to review the covenant with Moses, He makes sure to mention the celebrations He wants Israel to have. Let’s talk about what we celebrate.

One of the things I have long sought to do each year with the churches I have pastored is to have a Sunday set aside to simply celebrate together what God has done among and through us over the past year. I try to make the day different from the norm. I’ve gone so far as to hang streamers all over the sanctuary and hand out party hats to everyone. I gave out noisemakers once, but only once. I gave the go ahead to have beach balls being batted around one time too. That was a one-off permission. We’ve played games, given out cupcakes, and heard lots of personal stories of Gospel impact. It’s typically a pretty fun day.

The whole goal of the event is to get the people excited about what God has done and is doing, and to leave them eagerly anticipating what He is going to do next. In a couple of weeks, we are going to be celebrating God’s work together and I’m going to tell the congregation then that the best way to do that is to double down and pursue even more of His work’s being accomplished in our midst.

I remember in my last church that starting the tradition of having an annual Celebrate Sunday was the beginning of an extended season of growth. The more excited the people were about what God was doing, the more they were willing to commit themselves to His doing even more with and through them. We saw more ministry happen. We saw more people engage in missions. We saw more sacrificial generosity from the congregation. We saw more people baptized. It was a fun season.

When we celebrate something, we tend to get more of it. The celebrations remind us of good things in the past that we want more of in the future. They call to mind how those good things happened which serves to give us some guidance for how we can make sure they continue to happen into the future. The various federal holidays we celebrate in the U.S. are all aimed at accomplishing that in one way or another. Or, at least, they were when they were first conceived and made official.

Thanksgiving reminds us to be thankful. That one’s rather obvious. New Year’s Day was traditionally to be a reminder of the importance of gratitude as well. Labor Day was all about celebrating the organized labor movement of the early 20th century. I’m not a huge fan of labor unions today for several reasons that I won’t go into here, but when they were first conceived, they really were an important mechanism for affecting necessary changes in how large employers were treating their employees. King, Jr.’s day is a reminder of the evils of racism, but also how powerful nonviolent resistance is in the face of such evil. King, of course, was a committed Christian and wouldn’t have done what he did without that worldview foundation, but that tends to be forgotten today. Even Christmas in its currently secularized form is a reminder of the importance of generosity and family.

As God was laying out the foundation that He wanted Israel to stand on so that they could flourish as a people, He gave them some things that He wanted them to celebrate. There were others that eventually got added over the centuries, but these three were foundational. He wanted them to remember that it was Him who formed them as a people in the first place. Without His intervention, they would have still been slaves in Egypt. He was the one who redeemed them and brought them out to be a free people.

He also wanted them to remember that their provision came from Him. He was the one who made the rains fall and the crops grow. He wanted them to remember this when the firstfruits of the harvest started coming in, and to remember it again when the harvest was over. The posture of gratitude and trust and reliance that came from this trio of festivals would go a long way toward helping them remain faithful throughout their generations. These weren’t the only reminders God directed them to put in place. He also gave them the Sabbath to help them establish a shorter rhythm of trust and worship. But these were the major three.

In your own pursuit of the path of Christ, what kinds of things are you intentionally celebrating along the way? Yes, there are the major holidays, and these are worth engaging in intentionally and consciously. The reminder of God’s love through the sending of His Son and the sacrificing of His Son are important to keep before us on an annual basis. The regular rhythm of proclaiming and celebrating Jesus’ death and resurrection through the Lord’s Supper is worthwhile for believers to engage in. It is also important in just your church family, or even your own individual family to intentionally mark and celebrate times and places when God’s power or presence were demonstrated to your family in some way. We tend to get more of what we celebrate. Choose to celebrate the right things and you’ll get more of those.