SEPTEMBER WAS FULL OF SPECIAL CELEBRATIONS
All three of the Fall Holy Days, The Feast of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement and The Feast of Tabernacles (seven days actually) happened in September this year.
We barely had time to think about approaching Fall, school starting, football, or Labor Day; but they were happening too! It was such a full month, and we tried to have articles for all of these times.
To help keep us anchored; we established The All My Days Calendar for our readers. You can go to that page of the blog and reference the current Hebraic Calendar Day by looking up the secular date. If that day was significant in any way; we had an article for you.
This new page has become pretty popular with our readers. It is our full intention to keep it up to date. We wrote articles about Elul, The Days of Awe and Every Fall Holy Day this fall. If you click on the link for that day; you have an instant devotional tool with an article to use for the season we are currently living through.
ELUL MEDITATIONS
This blogger believes in the importance of observing the days of Elul leading up to the Fall Holy Days. We published a thought-provoking article for each of the days of Elul. Hopefully; these tools were very helpful in making preparations for the upcoming Day of Atonement and leading into the feasts and festivals of fall. If you missed any of them; they are all posted on our ALL MY DAYS CALENDAR page.
THE FEAST OF TRUMPETS
If you missed any of our articles on The Feast of Trumpets; you can find them here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/first-day-of-forever-short-meditations-for-the-feast-of-trumpets-meditation-no-1-seasons/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/remember-the-firstfruits-offerings/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/apples-and-honey-feast-of-trumpets/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/the-rams-horn-rosh-hashanah-meditations-meditation-2-seasons/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/isaac-abraham-sacrifice/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/wishing-you-a-sweet-year/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/feast-of-trumpets-2017-rosh-hashanah-from-a-christian-perspective-seasons/
THE DAYS OF AWE
We gave you an article for every one of the Ten Days of Awe that arrived between The Feast of Trumpets and The Day of Atonement. They are easy to reference; just click into the ALL MY DAYS CALENDAR and reference all ten days there.
THE DAY OF ATONEMENT
It is hoped that our articles brought you great reminders and help for remembering all the things you wanted to bring before God before we reached the Day of Atonement for 2021.
The Day of Atonement is a solemn fast day; and we hope our articles led you to a place of examination of your past year which was followed up by prayer and fasting. This type of careful and mindful examination of our hearts would lead us to a perfect place of peace and contentment before God. It is the most sacred day of the year; the day that Christ atones for our sins.
How wonderful that we have this day every year to present ourselves as we are (filthy rags) before our Creator and cry out for mercy and forgiveness; and to realize his love and compassion for each of us as we go through the processes of life on earth.
Atonement prepares us for a transition into our purposes for God’s Great Coming Kingdom for the year coming up next. God doesn’t need this time (though I’m sure He appreciates it,) He designed these appointments for us to commune with Him and in the end, they are so refreshing and restorative.
These were the articles we published about The Day of Atonement this year: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/days-of-awe-4-why-fast/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/the-day-of-atonement-as-spelled-out-in-leviticus-16-come-as-a-child-lesson-222/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/days-of-awe-10-a-christian-observance-of-the-day-of-atonement/.
THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES
I hope all of your holy day celebrations were very blessed this year!
The Feast of Tabernacles is our season of joy.
It was especially joyful this year as we worshipped, fellowshipped, enjoyed feasting, and thanked God for delivering us from a very, very hard year. Some of us suffered through receiving a huge amount of natural immunity to COVID; for which we are now very grateful.
It wasn’t easy getting to this day and this place.
We are so thankful to be on this side of the pandemic with all of our family intact.
Through the year just passed, many prayers have gone out from our house for those who have suffered themselves or even lost loved ones, or possibly encountered life-changing chronic health problems.
Our hearts hurt with you.
I hope that your feast brought at least some form of healing and hope of a better future. Many people find that coming to the Feast of Tabernacles helps them turn a page and leave behind some of the sadness and pain.
At each feast we are reminded of the fact that one day God is going to wipe all of our tears away and there will be no more suffering or disease.
This new world may be closer than we know. We continue to celebrate that fact with joy every time we find ourselves at The Feast of Tabernacles.
For us; it was probably THE BEST YEAR EVER!!!!
Yes; I know – it does seem that we say that every year.
Well; every year it is true!
God continues to bless us all in so many abundant ways. Every Passover we say “If God had only done only ONE thing for us; it would have been enough; then each Feast of Tabernacles we are astounded to find our blessings overflowing to the point that we can’t even count them all; like the stars in the sky in the promises to Abraham.
Here are our posted articles about Christians and believers celebrating The Feast of Tabernacles; except for the articles we labeled Days 1 – 7 of The Feast of Tabernacles, which are easily referenced by going to the ALL MY DAYS CALENDAR and clicking into the link for each appropriate day. https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/building-sukkah-feast-tabernacles-seasons/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/the-feast-of-tabernacles-is-coming/.
Here are some of my favorite photos of my family at the Feast of Tabernacles:
There is so much more to share; but I must go on and finish this post!
I did want to mention that we also posted all of our Sukkah stories for The Sukkah Series Stories which we try to post every year. We like to read these one at a time at our family gathering on each day of The Feast of Tabernacles. The author (Gail Landgraf) is busy working on more stories to add to this collection. Here are the short stories we have posted so far: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/isaacs-sukkah/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/sukkah-of-joseph/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/abrahams-sukkah-from-the-sukkah-stories-series-story-one/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/jacobs-sukkah/.
COME AS A CHILD BIBLE STUDY
In spite of so many seasonal teachings throughout September; we did manage to carry on with our every Thursday walk through the bible.
We were studying Deuteronomy Chapters 27-28 this month, which is all about the blessings and curses for obeying God. I think these lessons are a wonderful reminder for the days we are living through in our culture and nation right now.
Here are the links to all of our September bible study articles. Remember; if you follow us every Thursday, we will eventually make it all the way through the bible by walking through the journey together page-by-page and word-by-word with the wide-eyed eyes of a child who adores their Father: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/god-honors-obedient-countries/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/the-fruit-of-your-womb-will-be-blessed/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/blessings-for-obedience/, https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/acknowledging-the-curses/.
MORE SEASONAL ARTICLES IN SEPTEMBER
Okay; it wasn’t TOTALLY about The Fall Holy Days, we did sneak a few other seasonal articles in between those. I’ve linked them here: PRODUCTS: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/the-in-season-lifestyle-community-store-for-november-2021/, MONDAY NIGHT MENUS: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/back-to-school-snacks/. https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/football-recipes/; PIECES OF THE PUZZLE: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/a-word-of-encouragement-for-followers-of-jesus/.
What a month September brought to us!
September will be hard to top in October; but we will try our best.
PREVIEW OF OCTOBER 2021 ARTICLES TO COME
One nice thing about having done all of the Holy Days of Fall in September is that we can just spend our time during October simply delighting in the adventures of the season. We can do the simple things like enjoying the beautiful landscapes changing before our very eyes, taking long walks through colorful little towns and swapping the stories and poetry of fall.
There are lots of leaves to be raked at home and front yards to make festive with harvest decor.
October will be full of fall travel articles, good fall recipes and menus, plans for creating the best Thanksgiving ever, some fall decorating ideas, some theological thoughts about whether or not Christians should celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I can guarantee you that you will not read the same thoughts on another site.
Come walk with us through this fall journey!
We definitely want to make you think about what you are celebrating, and WHO and WHEN and HOW you go about every seasonal celebration of this earthly lifetime.
Some of us have promised appointments with God to keep; and many of us need to throw away a lot of pagan traditions that displease Him. However; there are facts you might not have considered and we DO want to bring those up too. For every pagan activity we throw away; there are so many joyful and happy things to celebrate about being a child of God in the Fall season of the year.
Of course our aim is always to give God the glory. There are some thoughts on this subject that may or may not be familiar to you; and some new revelations that may open your eyes a bit wider.
We want to share our thoughts with you; and we hope you will feel free to comment. Your thoughts matter to us. This blog values the freedom of speech.
Sometimes I think October is a month of the year that is full of new epiphanies for people desiring to lead a loyal and devoted Christian life.
Fall discoveries are amazing and life-changing.
Keep reading to understand more. Our mission is to share God’s truths with you.
Looking forward to seeing you in October of 2021!
Blessings!
Gail Landgraf/Writer/Editor/Publisher of The IN SEASON Lifestyle Blog