WHAT'S MISSING

DAY 60: SOMETHING IS MISSING! Last  year at this time it was February 29th. It's the day that wreaks havoc on all 365 day devotional books.  Once every four years, that bonus day sneaks in to remind us once again that we do not order our days. If we did, we wouldn't have allowed that random slight rotation to mess up an otherwise orderly measure of time fit neatly into 365 each year.

God ordered the world. He chose the speed of the rotation of the earth and its orbit around the sun.  With purpose and precision He added that pesky quarter day that we must account for by creating an extra day every fourth February just to keep up with Him. No matter what structures we have put in place to convince us that we are in control, they are really all just illusions. As surely as the earth orbits the sun, man orbits the sovereign will of God.  We can fudge that reality for a while, but eventually it will catch up with us and God will have His way.  Today's reading is a reminder that while God gives us every opportunity to keep pace with Him, in the end, He will have His way with His will. 


In Leviticus 25 God tells Israel that as soon as they occupy the promised land (remember they are still in the dessert) they are to begin giving the land itself a Sabbath. Every seventh year they are to cease planting crops and let the earth, which God reminds them belongs to Him, have a rest.  You can imagine that following through on this commitment would take great faith... or would it?  Turns out there would be no need for them to worry because God would see to it that they had all they needed.

1 Be assured that I will send my blessing for you in the sixth year, so the land will produce a crop large enough for three years. ²² When you plant your fields in the eighth year, you will still be eating from the large crop of the sixth year. In fact, you will still be eating from that large crop when the new crop is harvested in the ninth year. 

God is fully aware that sometimes out faith is weak.  For Israel, He would provide them the extra three years of food BEFORE they had to take the step of letting the ground lay fallow.  Some of the other requirement God gave would require more trust.  In addition to the Sabbath years of rest for the land, God also gave some requirements to observe every 50th year, called the Jubilee year.  During this time, for example:

Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you - and you shall return every man unto his own clan, you shall return every man to his family. Leviticus 25:10
    
The land must not be sold permanently, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners, my tenant farmers.   Leviticus 25:23

These requirements might have required faith indeed as they would be effecting them in the pocketbook, as we like to say.  It costs money to let all indentured servants go free.  Land that they had purchased had to be returned to it's original owner.  Debts were even to be forgiven. These were not cheap requirements.  But they did come with a promise. 

 ¹⁸ “If you want to live securely in the land, follow my decrees and obey my regulations. ¹⁹ Then the land will yield large crops, and you will eat your fill and live securely in it. 

They also came with a warning: (for this you have to jump ahead to tomorrow's reading, but I had an extra day to peek, remember)


   ¹⁴ “However, if you do not listen to me or obey all these commands, ¹⁵ and if you break my covenant by rejecting my decrees, treating my regulations with contempt, and refusing to obey my commands. . . ¹⁷ I will turn against you, and you will be defeated by your enemies. . .³³ I will scatter you among the nations and bring out my sword against you. Your land will become desolate, and your cities will lie in ruins.

SPOILER ALERT:  Despite God's promise to take care of them, and despite His warning, something was missing: Israel did not obey. For 430 years, 70 Sabbath years, they neglected God's commands.  Fast forward a few hundred years and God allowed the land to rest exactly 70 years while His people were in captivity in Babylon in payback for the years they withheld from God.

With or without our cooperation, God will accomplish His will for His purposes. Imagine if Israel had been in orbit around those Sabbath years. The story of their history might be much different.  Imagine if WE would orbit around the heart and will of God.  What in our history might be written differently?

Holding on to control of my own life so tightly that I can't adjust my orbit to God's gravity just might mean that a bigger adjustment is coming later.  Oh that I would see my life is not my own.  My possessions are not my own.  My time is not my own. My calendar is not my own.  My priorities are not my own.  My values are not even my own.

It is ALL HIS.  I AM HIS. God has every right to ask ANYTHING of me.

He chooses the hours in the day and clocks them to the second in the universe.  He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  He has the hairs on my head numbered. As my husband likes to say, "If He asks me to stand on my head and stack greased bb's, I do it."  While that little task is far to pointless for our Holy God, there is nothing that He could command that is too small for my full obedience, or too large that He is not worthy of it.

I don't want to get to the end of this calendar year, or any year, to find something missing. Obeying every minute, every day, every week, every year, and even on those random sneaky February 29th that give me one BONUS day to give to God what is truly His: EVERYTHING.

Day 60 of 365
Leviticus 24
Leviticus 25:1-46
Mark 10:13-31
Psalm 44:9-26
Proverbs 10:20-21