To Everything There is a Season

The garden is winding down, the leaves on the trees are still green, but there's a coolness in the morning and evening that wasn't here a week ago.  The air conditioner is off and the windows are open, once again.  As the seasons change I am once again reminded of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes.

A Dear Brother asked me how I kept track of the "first of the year" on the Biblical calendar.  We know YHWH was very clear that the first month is in the spring, when the barley is nearly ready for harvest, yet the number of the year changes at Yom Teruah, the 7th month.  Now, this isn't a new doctrine I'm introducing, but rather a question that has been in my spirit for some time now.

It seems many weeks in social media, the Sabbath is celebrated with the time honored debate as to when it actually begins . . . which has become sad and mundane.  It has been through this nearly never ending debate, I've begun to see something different.  By nearly never ending, I am acknowledging when Messiah returns, the debates will indeed end!  HalleluYah!

When Sabbath begins was not an issue until electricity and the invention of engines.  Without engines and electricity, nobody worked after dark, any day of the week.  There was no way to hang lanterns on a mule's ear or oxen yoke.  It simply wasn't an issue.  With modern conveniences, we now have the capability and free time to make an issue of everything, and with technology, we can take our issues global.  So in realizing Abba's time was really revealed in a day consisting of evening and morning, this led me consider the seasons.

We know the first month is relatively early in spring.  That is specifically addressed in Exodus.  We also know until the industrial revolution, most societies were agrarian.  Even the cities of commerce in Bible times were utterly dependent upon farmers, shepherds, and fishermen.  So, perhaps the seventh month is significant in the same way the seventh day is, a time of completion and the winter months compare to the night.  A time of dormancy.  Since the next growing season, the land will rest, I won't do my usual fall plowing, and the frost will put an end to the fresh veggies.  It may be the time between the completion of seventh month and the first month is simply a time of agrarian rest [night, if you will.]

We keep track of the moon through the winter season and we know the months continue to be numbered. The number attached to the year is simply to remind the people of YHWH, when this world was created, and to enable us to keep track of the Sabbath year.

And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you.  Numbers 29:1