A festal gathering

        How sweet it is for joyful people to gather with their family and friends around a festive table! The preparations are exciting as the feast takes shape and family and friends gather together to a warm welcome among those who love them. We've all experienced those wonderful days at Thanksgiving and Christmas, celebrating God's goodness and bounty and grace and His Presence among us: God with You—Emmanuel. And if our dearest treasures have already gone Home ahead of us, we still have the memories and thankfulness to our Lord.

          We're ending the holiday season now that began with Thanksgiving and ushers in a new and as-yet unlived year ahead of us. Those festive days and weeks remind us of so much of God's pattern in scripture. Six feasts and one fast (Yom Kippur—Day of Atonement) were part of the Mosaic law to celebrate God's continual goodness to His people. At the feasts there was music and dancing and joyful, happy conversation and abundant food carefully prepared.

          When the exiles returned from Babylon to their home in the Promised Land, Ezra the Priest brought out the Book of the Law of God and read it aloud before the great assembly from early morning to midday. When the people realized how they had fallen short of obeying the Lord with all their hearts, they wept and repented and sought the Lord. But after awhile
“Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, . . . said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.   “Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be quiet, for this day is holy; do not be grieved.” And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.” Nehemiah 8:8-12 ESV

         The greatest feast of all still awaits us and surely anticipating the glory that is yet to come will fill our hearts with joy and keep us from being discouraged even in the midst of difficulties and pain. “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” Isaiah 25:6-9 ESV

         Not only so, but even before those days if the Lord takes us Home before He returns, we will immediately see Him in His glory and we will see our loved ones who have gone before us, and we will be participating in a joyful festive assembly. ^“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, [in joyful assembly NIV]. We will know joy and delight in a way we've never experienced before when we see Jesus in His glory.