God likes a good party.

He commands them seven times throughout the Jewish calendar year. His instructions to His people were clear: Invite everyone! Feast! Tell stories! Play games. Celebrate God’s goodness!

In Nehemiah 8, God has planned a party for His people who have just finished rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. Nehemiah has found the scrolls with God’s law and read them aloud for the first time in forty years. Now, it is time to party.

For eight days, the Jewish people celebrate Sukkot, or the Festival of Tabernacles. They begin with a Sabbath rest. Then the activities start. They create temporary, tent-like homes with plant-based roofs so they can look up at the stars and remember God’s promise to Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the lights in the sky. They feast and stay in their tents as they remember the stories of their ancestors, who camped in the wilderness forty years under God’s care.

Some 1600 years later, during the celebration of Sukkot, Jesus came to live among us. As God had done before, He came to lead us out of the wild, dry, wilderness and into the Promised Land. Jesus came to be our guide, just as His Father had done.

That’s a party worth celebrating!