We celebrate the bibilical feasts in our family and what fun we have doing it!  We started doing this a few years ago and each year gets more exciting.  We even have extended family who celebrate them and our church has started to celebrate the feasts, too!  It is a great time.

Tomorrow evening, the 12th, as the sun sets, the Feast of Trumpets will begin.  We do not celebrate Rosh Hoshanah the way the Jewish people do.  The bible says that the new year actually begins in the spring, not the fall.  Rather, we celebrate literally the blowing of the trumpets.  (It makes me wonder how the tradition of the new year got started... it makes much more sense that the new year would begin at the begining of the planting and harvesting cycle.  My daughter pointed that fact out to us today while we were doing our calender study.  God is so much smarter than we are and we always have to botch up His plan with our own!  The Jews are starting a new year in the fall and we start ours in the middle of winter, for heavens sake!  Springtime is the obvious choice.  I'll have to side with God on that one.)   

The Feasts make a great unit study.  The study of a shofar is fascinating, to be sure.  The noise that they make when they are blown is so loud!  It brings to life the stories of Gideon's army and the walls of Jericho.  It is also fitting to read 2 Thessalonians 4:16-18.  Remember, this feast has yet to be fulfilled!  How much more exciting does it get?

Our church will gather tomorrow for a fabulous dinner and praise and worship music to follow.  As the sun sets, several men from our fellowship will actually blow shofars!  My husband has to work and will miss the fun, but my sons will take our shofar and take turns blowing it.  It is nearly bigger than they are, but they can do a good job of blasting it!

If you are interested in learning more about these awesome holidays, check out A Family Guide to Biblical Holidays, Celebrating the Biblical Feasts, or The Seven Feasts of Israel.  They are all good books and will give you tons of ideas.  They are available through www.rainbowresource.com.

Don't miss out on the blessing.  The feasts are stories about Jesus and they are not just for Israel, just like salvation is not just for Israel.  We have been adopted in to the family and our Father is an amazing story teller!

Shalom!