Three Feasts
a Day

These verses come from the same mountaintop conversation in which God renewed the covenant after the golden calf episode. Within that renewal, God assigned three annual feasts to the Israelites' calendar: the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which came in the spring (Exodus 34:18), the Feast of Weeks, which came with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering, which came at the turn of the year. Then God added a standing invitation. Three times a year, all the men of Israel were to appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel.

This commandment centers on a single verb, appear. The feasts involved food, travel, and celebration, but their purpose was presentation, since three times a year the nation presented itself before its God. A feast, in God's design, is a meeting with Him that includes a meal. He structured the calendar so that His people could never drift more than a single season away from His face.

Notice when each feast fell. Weeks arrived with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and Ingathering arrived when the year's produce was brought in. Thus we see that God attached His appointments to the provision already moving through Israel's fields, so that every stage of supply ended in a meeting with the One who supplied it.

Our daily lives carry a smaller version of that same rhythm. We see it in the three main stops we make for food each day. Scripture shows God's people meeting Him at exactly this kind of frequency. Daniel knelt and prayed three times a day (Daniel 6:10), and the first believers broke bread daily, eating together with glad and sincere hearts (Acts 2:46). Paul went further still and wrote that whether we eat or drink, we should do it all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). A mealtime is a picture of this appearing before the Lord. The stops are already scheduled; the only question is whether we will meet anyone there.

However, we must be careful not to turn every meal into a regulation. The three feasts were appointments to enjoy rather than a quota to satisfy, and our dining tables should work the same way. We can accompany our meals with a short grace that is genuinely offered before Him, or a verse or a short reading over a lunch break; all these make a meal into a small feast, because what defines a feast is the Lord's presence at it.

Today's question is one of rhythm: which of my three daily meals could most easily become a meeting with the Lord?