And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field. Exodus 23:16
I listened as the conductor shouted, ‘Board’, and swung himself onto the last car, and I watched as the last Via passenger train to roll through Saint John pulled away from the station and disappeared down the tracks heading east. I made my way across the platform and into the now-empty waiting room. The man behind the ticket counter – now without a job – was quietly packing away his belongings and preparing to close the station. But he had put some music on the station speakers, and that empty waiting room filled with the familiar strains of Auld Lang Syne. It seemed a fitting eulogy as more than 100 years of passenger train service through that city came to a permanent halt. It’s certainly a fitting eulogy for the year that you and I are bidding goodbye to today.
Our text speaks of a pair of feasts. One was the feast of firstfruits, which celebrated the start of the harvest. The second was the ingathering feast, which marked the wrapup of all the year’s labours. As the year ended, the Israelite was to celebrate with a feast to mark that year’s accomplishments. I am guessing that the size of the feast would be based on the success of the year. We too should celebrate the close of this year. What do we have to celebrate?
If we have reached the end of this year, we have done better than many whose funerals we attended, whose obituaries we read during the last dozen months. In addition to our very survival, we ought to celebrate the good health and the soundness of mind that we enjoy. Whether we have a fatter bank account than when the year started, we can appreciate that we were fed every day, clothed comfortably all the time, and had a home in which to find shelter and rest. That’s worth celebrating! Have our souls been able to rejoice this year over the proclamation of the Gospel and word of folks being saved? We should have celebrated with the angels then and celebrate again today. Has God preserved our Assemblies this year? Has he given encouragement as folks were baptized and added to the fellowship? Has he given us faithful ministry from godly men, sweet fellowship with our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and daily encouragement and strength from His Word? The more we think about it, the more we realize that God has been very good to us this year.
A counting of our blessings of this past year will surely lead us to celebrate today! -Jim MacIntosh