This Is An Opportunity

If we go to the Bible to the Book of Leviticus, in the Old Testament, Chapter 23 and I am reading only one verse, verse 43:

And The Lord said to Moses “that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am The Lord your God.”

Lest we forget.

Now that we are sitting in lockdown and a lot of us are just waiting for things to start moving again, what an appropriate time to tell our loved ones about our roots, where we came from.

My mother was a great story-teller.

She wasn’t very well.

She spent a lot of time in bed because she was sick so often.

And I remember my young brother and my sister, my baby sister - we used to sit on the bed and listen to mom, telling us about her childhood and our roots in bonny Scotland.

And we would be mesmerised by her stories and I can remember them today as if they happened yesterday.

We need to take this opportunity, where we have time, to sit and remember where The Lord Jesus Christ has brought us from.

I go to Israel, almost every year and I speak at the Feast of Tabernacles.

It is when the people of Israel take seven days.

It is a national holiday.

They build these little booths.

Some of them who live in flats will even build a booth in their sitting-room, or they will build it in the bottom of the garden, or on a sidewalk if they have a restaurant.

And they will decorate that booth with figs, and dates, and grapes and pomegranates, and they will put palm leaves on the roof and poplar, leafy poplar branches, and they will go in there every night with their family, and the fathers will tell their children about how The Lord brought them out of slavery, out of Egypt.

We are talking three thousand years ago and brought them forty years through the desert, across the Jordan River and into the land of milk and honey.

Oh my dear friend, what an opportunity for you to sit with your family.

I am talking as a farmer now, and tell them about how The Lord took us through those droughts, when we never thought we would make it; how The Lord protected us through those floods when we were cut off from the rest of civilization for days, because of the flood rivers overflowing their banks; how The Lord has protected us through sickness and has taken us through personal tragedies, so that their faith might grow stronger.

This is an opportunity, lockdown time, to sit down with our loved ones and remember where The Lord has brought us from.

He says in Hebrews, Chapter 13 and verse 5:

“…I will never leave you and I will never forsake you”.

When this plague passes us by, we are going to start again.

It is going to be the most exciting time, as we see the greatest revival that the world has ever seen, take place.

Remember - tell one another about the good things that God has done for us lest we forget.