Week 6, Day 41 - Restoration

"For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of rest, a Sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest."  Leviticus 25:3-5

REFLECT

George Washington Carver (1864-1943) became an expert agriculturalist. He led a revolution of farming methods in the South that took the vast fields - exhausted and lifeless by cotton farming - and introduced methods to give the land rest and replenishment through the farming of protein-rich products like soy. Dr. Carver realized that the land needs healing.

George Washington Carver, this remarkable inventor and entrepreneur, was born a slave. When only an infant, he and his mother were abducted by slave raiders. His mother was sold and shipped away, but George's master bought him back from the slave raiders in exchange for a horse. Slavery, redemption, healing. Carver eventually went to high school, then became the first black student at Simpson College, gained a master's degree in agriculture, and became a professor. He even invented 300 uses for peanuts, though he passed by many opportunities to own patents saying, "God gave them to me, so how can I sell them to someone else?"

That is why the Year of Jubilee described in Leviticus 25 was a time for the Israelites to let the land lie fallow (i.e., not plant their crops) so that the fields would regain their nutrients and moisture. Pressed to exhaustion, the land would be of no use to anybody, becoming dustbowls and wasteland. Jubilee was rest for the land, restoration for the people, forgiveness of debt, recommitment to justice, and freedom for the slave.

Jubilee brings so many of the needs of our lives together: healing, redemption, freedom. When we rest and remind ourselves that only God is God and we are not, then God can bring healing, restoration, and life.

MAKE IT REAL

Today eliminate one thing you would normally try to squeeze into your schedule. Take that time to rest or relax with a walk. Be still and focus on the fact that only God is God.

Day 42