“You will make the 50th year holy, proclaiming freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It will be a Jubilee year for you: each of you must return to your family property and to your extended family. The 50th year will be a Jubilee year for you. Do not plant, do not harvest the secondary growth, and do not gather from the freely growing vines, because it is a Jubilee: it will be holy to you.” Leviticus 25:8-12

It’s not often the book of Leviticus brings us comfort. Leviticus is the book in the bible known for recording the ancient laws – the tiny detailed ones. We look back at Leviticus from thousands of years away and think of how different their world was to ours. They didn’t have cars, or iPhones, or grocery stores. They didn’t have pollution, fossil fuels, or climate change. They couldn’t imagine the feeling of a canceled flight, or a day binge-watching on Netflix, or video chatting with people far away.

But God’s people during the time of Leviticus understood something we often don’t. They understood rest.

God taught them to rest on the seventh day. Every seventh day – the Sabbath. And the land too. On the 50th year, (after seven times seven years, or 49), the land too was to rest. A “year of Jubilee.” When everyone took a step back and returned to their people and forgave debts and let go what they’d been holding on to.

In the Hebrew, “Jubilee” implies the sound of trumpets, of blowing a long blast on a horn at the beginning of the year of Jubilee. It is a sound of release, and it introduces the new.

This summer, Ferncliff enters a Summer of Jubilee. We find comfort in this ancient biblical practice of letting the land rest. In this time of pandemic, when so much is uncertain, we are thoughtful about the rest that our buildings and grounds are being provided with. We are taking a step back and looking at the big picture and letting go of what we’ve been holding on to. With the Board’s decision to cancel summer programs last week, we hear the sound of trumpets heralding us into something entirely new.

While we hold the sadness of what is not happening this summer, we look forward with hope that maybe we will all learn this summer about rest, about Jubilee, and about trying something new.

Jocelyn Wildhack is our Camp, Events, and Forest Church Coordinator. She is soon to be ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).