This month we will celebrate Shavuot the Feast of Weeks. This year it falls on the 23rd of May. This Festival is one of the three Pilgrim Festivals when the Jewish People are commanded to go up to the place of the Lord’s Tabernacle and later the Temple. One of the interesting things about this is that while it is such a major Feast of the Lord the exact date to celebrate this festival is not given at least not a calendar date.

“Tell the People of Israel, When you arrive at the land that I am giving you and reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain that you harvest. He will wave the sheaf before GOD for acceptance on your behalf; on the morning after Sabbath, the priest will wave it….. Count seven full weeks from the morning after the Sabbath when you brought the sheaf as a Wave-Offering, fifty days until the morning of the seventh Sabbath. Then present a new Grain-Offering to GOD.

Lev 23:10-16

Therefore it is in connection to the previous Festival of First Fruits and the waving of the barley crop that we are to count 7 weeks and on the 50th day, the day after the completion of the count of those weeks we were to celebrate with the Wheat harvest. These days of counting are called the Count of the Omer. The Omer being the quantity of Barley that was waved in the Tabernacle at First Fruits. Observant Jews take this count very seriously each evening after the evening prayers which marks the beginning of the new day the count is proclaimed. Unlike most counts where we count down, in the case of the Omer we count up. Our eyes are looking upwards and forward to that which God has in store for us.

During these weeks Between Pesach and Shavuot God took the children of Israel through the Red Sea and the desert to Mt. Sinai. More than just an intence physical journey this was a spiritual journey. The journey forming them into a people and preparing them for Mt. Sinai.

God had gave a gift to the people at Sinai, the Torah, a road map by which they were to live as a community and they needed a time to prepare for that gift, after hundreds of years of slavery in a pagen land. The followers of Yeshua after His death and resurrection also needed a time of preparation for the gift that they would receive at Shavuot (Pentecost), the Holy Spirit empowering from on high. This vital empowering would give these first followers of Yeshua and those that were to follow a vital tool, to affectively live the life that He had called them to. This Shavuot marks for us one year since the opening of the PAVILION Prayer Tower and all that we have experienced through this ministry. As we approach Shavuot may we count the days we live and that the Almighty has granted us. May we make His priorities our priorities. Each day there are many distractions vying for our time and energies, let us focus in and make each day count. May we be ready for all that He has for us this Shavuot and beyond.