FEAST OF TABERNACLES (SUKKOTH)

One Sister was saying that she was excited what message Pastor would be preaching during Sukkoth. I roughly know this is the Feast of Tabernacles when the Jews build booths to remember how the Lord led them in the 40 years of desert. But I didn't know what it really means to the Jews or exactly when it falls on. As I researched about the month after Rosh Hashanah, I realised Sukkoth started from last Sunday (27/9) and ended yesterday.

It is an agricultural festival that originally was considered a thanksgiving for the fruit harvest. The celebration of Sukkoth, and the harvest season that defines it, alludes to the profundity of this transience. The temporary nature of seasons. A planted seed emerges from the earth as an entirely new entity, yet in its distinct physical form it bears the same seed that initially conceived it.

In anticipation of the harvest season, the farmer sends a seed on a long descent into the darkness of the soil. In this foreign abyss, it begins a lengthy process of growth and change. In order to meet its potential as viable produce, the seed must abandon its initial form. Throughout the process of physical transformation, it ascends through the soil along the same path that defined its planting. As it breaks through the earth, emerging as its fully formed self, it would appear that the result is entirely distinct from the seed that was planted. But fascinatingly, the plant bears seeds identical to the seed that began the journey.

With a little more than the patient hand of the gardener, tepid water and tended soil, the insignificant seed struggles with great tenacity on the darkened journey back to its origin. On Sukkoth, the Jews enjoy the fruits of its labor and learn from its resolve. May we fight through these foreign soils with the tenacity of the little seed, never forsaking our journey until our emergence from the darkness of exile. When we inevitably surface, we will have finally brought our omnipotent Gardener the bountiful harvest He envisioned.

It also signified the temporal nature of seasons. No matter how stuck you may feel in the desert, it will come to an end. Hence the temporal nature of living in booths. Like how Dutch Sheets said eventually you will come to the kairos and horaios moment at some point. It also reminded me of how the seed once planted in darkness (in isolation), made its journey out of the soil into the light. And how it continues to blossom and bear fruits. It is a process of transformation just like the butterfly. Even though the end result looks very different from the seed, interestingly it will produce seeds that looked like its beginning. The seed may look ugly but the fruit will be beautiful. Just like the butterfly.