I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 17th of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start off in the Book of Deuteronomy 16:13:

“You shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your winepress.” 

The Feast of Tabernacles (it is also called Sukkot), is the time when the Israeli people celebrate what God has done in their lives. They build a little booth, which they call a sukkot, and that is where they spend time talking about the goodness of God. They decorate it with grapes, figs, olives and dates. They hang them in bunches all around this little building, and then for seven days, they go during the day and they sit in that little place, and they remember how God delivered them from Pharaoh, from Egypt, took them through the wilderness for forty years, and brought them into the Land of Milk and Honey, when they crossed the Jordan River. They sit and they tell their children, and they tell their grandchildren those stories, how God has protected them. They build up their faith. I believe that the strength of the Israeli nation is found in the fact that they continue to remember their past.

If you have written a book, I have written a few, and you have no before-time and you just start writing, it doesn’t make sense. You have got to tell the people where you are coming from. The dictionary says that the word, “prologue” means “introductory scene to a play” or in my case, to a story - what happened before. And that is the strength of the Israeli nation. They continue to tell their children and their children’s children how God has undertaken for them. 

I want to tell you, I have got a story, and it started on the 18th of February, 1979 at about 10 a.m., in a little Methodist church in the Main Street of Greytown, our little town that is 15 kilometres away. That day, I met Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour, and as they say, the rest after that is history, but it started many, many years before, and we have been through many hardships since. Yes, we have experienced droughts, fires, floods, disease, hardship, and personal tragedy, but Jesus Christ has been the Golden Thread that has held us together for 45 years on this farm, Shalom. 

You need to tell your story to your children. You need to tell them how you met Christ. You need to tell your friends at school how you have come into a relationship with God. That is what it is all about. Don’t forget the Feast of Tabernacles, seven days when the whole of Israel comes to a standstill and they remember where God has brought them from. You do the same!

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.