The LORD said to Moses, “The tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. Hold a sacred assembly and deny yourselves, and present an offering made to the LORD by fire. Do no work on that day, because it is the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the LORD your God.
Leviticus 23:26-28
Today is Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), which began last night at sundown. I’m sitting outside in the garden at JUC. There is barely a car on the road. Last night I wandered around with a few others from JUC just to take it in. I can hear the birds chirping all around me. The silence is golden.
Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Biblical calendar. It was on this day when the Temple stood that the high priest would enter the Most Holy Place in the Temple, where God placed his presence. The holiest man would enter the holiest place on the holiest day. On this day, one goat would be sacrificed and its blood brought into the Most Holy Place. Hands would be placed on another goat (called the scapegoat), symbolically transferring the sins of the people on it and it would be released into the desert. It is a day of fasting. It is a time of self-examination. It is a day of prayer and confession and repentance. It is a time to make things right between you and God as well as you and other people. It is a time to set straight the crooked things in life.
For those who place their faith in the Messiah Jesus, it also a time of thanksgiving, remembering the forgiveness of sins he brought by sacrificing himself on the cross. We cannot, on our own, come before the Holy King of the Universe. But thanks be to God that he did not leave us in eternal separation from him. Rather, he came to earth as one of us and gave himself to die in our place, dying as the perfect sacrifice for sins. Better yet, he also came back to life, promising to resurrect us one day, too.
So now, as I sit in this holy city probably less than a mile from where my Savior died for my sins, listening to the birds chirp, I reflect on all God has done for me and how I can respond even better to the love he has bestowed upon me. What about you?
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will– to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment–to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
Ephesians 1:3-10