Saturday, June 9, 2012

Sabbath and Jubilee Years

Today I read Leviticus 25 where the Lord commands the Israelites to take a Sabbath year, or in other words, to take the seventh year off and not plant or harvest anything that grows during every seventh year.  This reminds me a lot of field rotation and is a very interesting concept.  It does not explicitly state it in this chapter unless I missed it, but during this seventh year the Israelites also would not fight or go to war, debts were forgiven and indentured servants were set free.

Now, the first year, the Lord was really trying their faith in my opinion.  I mean it's a scary thing not to plant anything or harvest anything for a whole year.  God did say that on the sixth year they would harvest enough food for three years time.  So I imagine that when the sixth year came around and it was time to harvest the fields and fruits that the Israelites were saying a prayer that the Lord would come through as they knew that they would not be planting any food the next year.  I wonder how they kept all their food from spoiling or if it was like the mana they ate for forty years and the Lord made it so that the food would not spoil during those three years?  I guess we'll know one day.

The Lord also stated that every fiftieth year was to be a year of celebration and jubilee.  Feasts were to be held, dances were to be had.  It was to be a joyous time for everyone.  Heavenly Father definitely loves His children and wants their existence to be enjoyable.  Men are that they might have joy, He told Nephi.  Heavenly Father wants this existence to be as enjoyable as possible, but He still has to give us trials so that we can grow.  This life is for nothing if we do not have an opportunity to grow.  But He does not want it to be one trial after another.  Rather He wants us to be able to find joy in all that we do.  If we can do that, then we will have an extremely enjoyable life.  Until tomorrow.

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