Jubilee

Tomorrow, I will be 50 years old. I don't feel 50. I don't know what 50 is to feel like. Granted, there are mornings when I get out of bed, I feel very old, but on the whole I don't feel much different than when I turned 30. 50 years, 600 months, 18,220 days, give or take a leap year, half a century. They all don't sound so bad, expect the half century one, that sounds old.

This morning as I was having my devotions, I opened a devotional book I read only periodically, and found it speaking of the year of Jubilee, which occurred every 50 years. It's my year of Jubilee!

'You shall then sound the ram's horn abroad...on the day of Atonement...You shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each shall return to his own property, and each to his own family...For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you.' Leviticus 25.9-12

This jubilee doesn't mean jubilant, or joyous, though that would be the attitude of the people, being released from debt and bondage, but it actually means, ram's horn, which was used to call the jubilee to begin. It was a type of sabbath. A year of being set free. A year of returning. A year of rest. It was a call to a new beginning, a time of grace and of hope.

As I look over the past 50 years of my life, all I can see is God's faithfulness. There have been many good, and joyous years, there have been some very hard, and painful years, and times of self made bondage, and slavery. This year I pray it will be very much a year of jubilee for me. A year of release, of rest, of new beginning, a year to witness hope and God's justice in my life.

Tomorrow, you will not hear a ram's horn sounding my year of jubilee, but there will be loud exultation within me, as Mercy fills my heart.