Letting the land lie fallow is a time of Grace

"All this was to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah: 'Until the land has retrieved its lost Sabbaths, during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest while seventy years are fulfilled.' " 2 Chronicles 36:21

Holidays are a wonderful time for me as a writer because I never know what gems of wisdom will be uncovered during a family gathering.

This Easter, while we were peeling the foil off chocolate eggs and talking about what was happening in our lives, an elderly friend shared that she had recently taken stock of all the "treasures" she had collected over the years that had long held a place in her dining room breakfront. She recalled how much she had wanted certain things -- "nice things"-- she had called them. She had worked for them, saved for them and now had finally realized that there was nothing she could do with those things except look at them collecting dust ."You know," she said, leaning over as if to whisper some well-guarded secret, "too much of too much is too much."

We laughed at the obviousness of her "gem" but it was wisdom none-the-less, and simple wisdom of which we often lose sight, not only in relation to what we buy or accumulate or even eat or drink, but more profoundly in the way we live our lives. But God does not lose sight of it and so, sometimes, while we are busy with the "too much" while denying to ourselves that it really is "too much", God is making plans for us to lay fallow .

Letting the land lay fallow is a biblical teaching and commandment of God to the Israelites to let their lands rest every seventh year as a reminder that the land belongs to God and that God's people must trust in God's providence. Just as the land needs to be worked and planted the land also needs to lay fallow. This seventh year is a Sabbath year, a year of rest as the seventh day is a Sabbath day, a day of rest in the Lord, mindful always that we belong to God not to the material world in which we work and play.

When we become overly engaged in the "too much" of our life and culture there often comes a time when our minds and bodies seem to rebel and we sense our "fruitfulness" ebbing away. We are unable to produce and often feel a great desire to be alone. These experiences are sometimes hard to understand and we may berate ourselves for losing our momentum and enthusiasm, for failing to meet our responsibilities as employee or family member. But God's wisdom is greater than ours as God's love for us is certainly greater than our love for ourselves.

So it seems, God, who has already commanded us to keep holy the Sabbath day, sometimes "encourages" us into a longer period of fallowness, so we can rest and regain our strength and hopefully, in the process, be reminded that we belong to God.

God has called us to be a Sabbath people, to offer our Sundays as gifts of prayer and worship back to the God who made us and to see these seventh days, in the words of S.W. Duffield, as "quiet islands on the tossing seas of life."

Perhaps if we did as God commanded we wouldn't find ourselves drowning quite so often.

___________________________________

Mary Morrell is the author of Angels in High Top Sneakers, from Loyola Press.

Contact

Diocese of Metuchen
http://www.diometuchen.org NJ, US
Mary Morrell - Associate Director, Office of Religious Education, 732 562-1990

Email

mmorrell@diometuchen.org

Keywords

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