When you have a special guest over for dinner, your mom puts out the best china and silverware. She wouldn’t be very happy if she found you using these dishes and silverware when you come home after school to have a snack!
This is because unique occasions call for special objects which increase the feeling that we are doing something out of the ordinary. When it comes to God, who is extra-ordinary, there needs to be special objects and activities that are separate and apart from the regular things that we do in the course of a day. This is what we mean by the words “holy” and “sacred.”
Moses is telling his people what to do when it comes to worshipping God—how to increase that feeling of special that make them sense God’s presence to them by faith. Notice how smell is an important sense that adds to the feeling of the holy and the sacred.
Maybe there’s a special scented candle that you can light when you gather to pray and read God’s Word. You’re Bible itself placed on a table where you pray can change the feeling that what is about to happen is different from the ordinary, making it holy and sacred.
The Saturday passages follow the reading list that Jewish people use in their synagogue worship throughout the world. They are taken from
“The Torah,” the first five books of the Bible from Genesis to Deuteronomy that are read each year beginning with autumn.
These Firestarters are from a new edition of The Bible Through the Seasons being developed for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook. You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or table! Check the menu options at the site for more information.
The Bible Through the Seasons 