What makes you celebrate?

I celebrated my second Labor Day in a single year with family time and a wonderful BBQ with dear friends.  In Queensland AUS, Labor Day is celebrated on May 1st.  The White family and I had a lovely outing to the Gold Coast and Mount Tambourine during my first visit to Australia.  While driving home this evening, a license plate cover caught my eye.  It simply read, "Celebrate Eggplant."  The first thing that came to mind was "ridiculous," but then I caught myself.  I started thinking about all the things we celebrate.  People celebrate national holidays, birth of children, Little League opening day and closing ceremonies (which I will do anything to avoid and to this point have been very successful), graduations, career promotions, sports championships like the Super Bowl and World Series, a strike while bowling, a ringer while playing horseshoes, or some killer guacamole and salsa.  Now eggplant has been thrown into the mix.  I celebrate food and celebrate with food as much as anyone.  I'm not going to say eggplant can't be celebrated, but it certainly doesn't make my list.

It caused me to think on the fact that there all kinds of things people celebrate which are completely insignificant in the light of eternity or compared to the glory of God. How tragic it would be for the worship of God to fall short of pure celebration.  The most important people in our lives we tend to take for granted, and God is by far the Being most taken for granted.  Even professing followers of Jesus Christ celebrate the creature rather than the Creator, the gift over the Giver.  Believer, have you celebrated your Savior Jesus Christ today?  Have you acknowledged His labor of love passionately, knowing that He shed His blood that you might be redeemed?  As I continue to think about it, I honestly have to say that I gave the terrific steak I ate today more thought than that fact that Jesus labored that I might have rest in Him.  I do not say this with any joy, but with the intention of avoiding this pitfall in the future.

As we drove on, the worship CD began to play Brenton Brown's "Everlasting God."  My focus moved from eggplant to the LORD of all creation, the Maker and Sustainer of all things.  "Our God, you reign forever, our Hope, our strong Deliverer. You are the Everlasting God, you do not faint you won't grow weary, you're the defender of the weak, you comfort those in need, you lift us up on wings like eagles."  My heart was moved to celebrate the King of Kings and magnify Him.  We can glory in our weakness for it is in our God we are strong.  We can glory in our need because our God is abundantly able to provide beyond what we can ask or even think.  If we fall short of celebrating our Savior, perhaps we don't know or appreciate Him as we ought.

Isaiah 40:28-31 says, "Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary.  His understanding is unsearchable. [29] He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. [30] Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, [31] but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."  If there was ever a cause for celebration, we should celebrate God!  His ways are past finding out, and His mercy endures to all generations.  Let us not "celebrate eggplant" and leave the celebration of our Savior undone.  We would be as the Pharisees who strained out a gnat and swallowed a camel.  Let us wait upon the LORD and celebrate Him!