Sukkot

It is once again Sukkot, and people everywhere have put up their Sukkahs. 

Very few people actually live in these tents.  For most people it is simply where one has to eat their meals (even restaurants and cafés will put up sukkahs).

OK, what is Sukkot, you might be asking?  Sukkah is the Hebrew word for tent, so Sukkot is often referred to as the feast of Tabernacles or the feast of booths in the non-Jewish, English speaking world.  Sukkot comes at the end of the harvest, so it might be compared in some ways to Thanksgiving, but it is a much more extended celebration and has more meaning.  At Sukkot people are commanded to rejoice and be thankful.  It is a time to spend with family and even strangers (who are supposed to be welcomed into your family during this time).  Four things are given for us to be thankful for during, so that we have something to meditate and realize how much we should rejoice for and be happy about.

1.  We should be thankful for what we have in the present: the crops that have been gathered, for those that have jobs, they should be thankful that in the bad economy they have jobs, etc.
2. We should be thankful for being redeemed from slavery: This is the point people often think of, how God brought His chose people out of slavery and they wondered in the wilderness for 40 years and then went into the promised land.  However, for all Believers, Jew and non-Jew alike, this holds significance.  We have been redeemed from the slavery of sin and made free in Christ.
3. We should also be thankful for what is promised in the future: Having a sukkah can help us be thankful for what we have and what is to come.  The wind that comes and blows away the sukkah, or the rain that soaks everything will make us thankful that the sukkah is only temporary and that we have a real home that is wind and rain proof.  In the same way our home is temporary in the view of eternity.  A sukkah is to house/flat as a house/flat is to our heavenly home.
4. Finally we can be thankful for God's written word.  One of the things friends and family are supposed to do during the seven days of Sukkot is to read the scriptures together.