Take a moment to read Deuteronomy 16 before reading the devotional below.
This year I will see Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol performed at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island for the thirtieth time. I have seen it every Christmas season of my life (with the exception of one year when we went to see the Nutcracker and regretted it) since I was old enough to sit still. It is one of many Christmas traditions that define the holiday season. It begins with putting up the Christmas decorations on the weekend after Thanksgiving. It ends with taking down the same decorations on the weekend after New Year’s. It is the rhythm of those traditions that define the holiday season for me.
In Deuteronomy 16 God is creating annual rhythms of tradition for his people. They don’t revolve around the holidays that many of us celebrate: Thanksgiving, Christmas or the 4th of July. Instead, they are holidays that made sense for God’s people in that era – celebrating key events in their history and key aspects of the year like the harvest. More importantly, however, God instituted these holidays for the Israelites not just so they could have a rhythm of holidays but so that their religious and spiritual lives could have a rhythm. The intent was for these to be the spiritual high points of the year, constantly drawing God’s people to a deeper understanding of his love and faithfulness.
Some of these rhythms will be daily or weekly rhythms. However, annual rhythms are important too. Let there be times throughout the year that you set aside especially to re-energize your relationship with God. This might be a conference or a retreat. It might be a personal weekend alone set aside for prayer or it might be an annual gathering with a group of friends in which you seek God together. The point is this: growth doesn’t happen by accident. We must develop the discipline of prior planning so that we can build opportunities for growth and intimacy into our schedules. If we don’t, our lives will simply get filled up and the spiritual rhythms that are so important will simply never happen.