I learned to play the piano as a kid. My piano teacher was a kind and gentle woman of extraordinary patience, because while I played for nearly 7 years, I don’t think I ever excelled at it. Music was important in my home though, oddly enough: My dad played both the piano and the violin quite well (at least according to my memory), and my Granny Mona was herself a piano teacher. The point is, I began appreciating rhythm at an early age. To be honest, I think rhythm is knit into the spiritual DNA of every human by a Creator who understands fully and completely and far beyond us our need for consistency.

I no longer play the piano: A myriad of geographic relocations have made toting a piano around the country quite unreasonable. But I have found healthy rhythms in the Torah that feed my soul far beyond the notes produced by any musical instrument, and before you dismiss this, please consider one critical Truth:

God gave us Torah, and Yeshua (Jesus) came not to abolish it but to complete the teaching of it–to show us what it looks like to actually do the things God tells us to do–in perfect obedience. Yeshua paid the price for our inability to follow Torah perfectly and to allow us to be redeemed despite our imperfections, by Grace alone through faith in Him alone, but once we have been saved, we ought to be striving to live the way Yeshua lived. We follow all of Torah with joy because these are the rhythms God gave us, having created us and knowing exactly how our bodies and souls operate and what they need to function fully and well.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

Matthew 5:17

At least once a month I hear a Christian say something like: “Oh I am so glad we don’t have to follow those rules and do all that stuff in the Old Testament any more!”

These words break my heart. First of all, nothing could be further from the truth. Secondly, when I look around at most Christians today, I see something significant missing from their daily walk. While it is true we will not find complete healing in this life, we are promised the peace of God, and many of us are not finding it, not walking in it, because we are marching to the beat of our own (the wrong) drum. All who are in covenant with the God of Israel ought to instead be walking daily and seasonally to the rhythms He laid out in Torah. All of us who belong to Israel, whether genetically or spiritually.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Philippians 4: 8-9

True, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise . . . All these attributes describe the Word of God. The living Torah: Yeshua the Messiah. Why would we not want to read it, let the Spirit write it on our hearts, and then live it every day?

Take, for instance, the feasts and festivals (the Hebrew word is mo-ed, which literally means an appointed time, a meeting with God), which God commands his people to celebrate throughout every generation and the significant moves of God–either past or prophesied–on each of these days:

• Passover (Yeshua died)
• Unleavened Bread (Yeshua was buried)
• Firstfruits (Yeshua was resurrected)
• Shavuot (The Holy Spirit came as promised by Yeshua; Yeshua comes for His bride)
• Trumpets (Yeshua returns on a white horse with His bride)
• Yom HaKippurim (The wedding of Yeshua and His bride; Yeshua judges at the Great White Throne of Judgement)
• Sukkot (Yeshua’s birth; we tabernacle with Him forever)

Yeshua observed all of these mo’ed while He walked the earth. Christians in the early church kept these feasts and festivals as well. I believe God knows a little something about the kinds of healthy rhythms that keep us wholly fulfilled and in His peace and on the path to holiness. There is peace in obedience. There is joy in moving in step and in rhythm with Yahweh.

* Summary of Feasts and Festivals provided by Jodi Klein, House of Covenant, Bend, Oregon