mid-autumn festival

In terms of celebration, and from what I understand, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a bit like our Thanksgiving.  It's based on the lunar calendar, as are all the festivals here, and this particular one revolves around mooncakes, I mean the moon. 
I posted a few pictures of our attempt at celebrating, but today I found such a great post on the subject on our church's website, that I wanted to share it. I'm not sure this is legal just to cut and paste someone else's words wherever I want, but I'm going to do it anyway (as far as birth-order is concerned, I think it's normal for me to ask forgiveness instead of permission).

Devotional Thought - Harvest Festival!

By Tim LaTour in Island Evangelical Community Church 5 days ago | 71 viewsLink: http://bit.ly/1aPIvHy

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! I hope you were able to celebrate last night with glow sticks, lanterns playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (like the ones my kids have), time with family or just a nice evening with some friends and a few mooncakes.
This Festival celebration is becoming more and more of an event in our family. As I talked about last year, it’s one of the main holidays in Hong Kong that stand out to me because it was the first one we encountered when we moved here nine years ago. But now that our children are a little older, the festivities are becoming more and more attractive because, seriously, who doesn’t love glow sticks?!

Last night, as we were outside among the lights and crowds, I stopped for a minute and looked up at the moon. Wow! It was full and seemingly as bright as the sun!

While looking at this full, gleaming moon, I started to think about what everyone was celebrating…what does this festival even mean?

Historically, the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates many things: family gatherings, a time for prayer, a celebration of the moon – but mainly, it celebrates thanksgiving for a harvest. Since we’re in an urban area of the world, the concept of an agricultural harvest celebration may be a little foreign. But what is key to understand is that historically, after planting and growing, a community would gather their crops and mark that time with a celebration – usually in autumn.

This got me thinking about this passage in Luke 10:1-2:

…the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

The harvest is plentiful…

Here we see Jesus is sending out 72 disciples in pairs to go reach people with the gospel. He tells them that the harvest is plentiful, meaning, there are many people who are ready to receive Christ. What amazes me about this city is that people are increasingly interested in God – and also readyfor Him. We see it more and more at Island ECC. Our attendance has increased that we have added more chairs on the 10th floor, there are more and more people coming to Alpha, getting baptized, joining classes, going to conferences (this is just a teaser for this Sunday – make sure you’re here for this week’s sermon!). And we hear story after story of people bringing friends, coworkers or family members to church. People are READY!

…but the laborers are few.

Jesus knows that there is much work to be done. He wants us all to join in the effort of reaching people with the gospel! We can all be a part of this “harvest.” We can all lend a hand to helping spread the gospel. So…think about this: What am I doing to help reach those who a ready? How can I help?