Sabbaths For The Land

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Sabbaths for the Land

Calvin B. DeWitt

Some years ago, I was driving north from Edmonton to a Canadian farm family on the 54th parallel. Soon I would be stopping for tea with them. As I approached Neerlandia -- the name of their community -- I was somewhat startled by a timber wolf crossing the road in front of me. A few minutes later, as I sat with the family, I was even more surprised by their answer to my anxious question, "Do you have timber wolves around here?" Their reply was an excited "Yes!" This Christian family treasured the timber wolf as God's creature, to be kept along with the rest of the land they held in trust for their Creator.

I was also surprised to find that they allowed their barley fields to lie fallow every second year, providing rest for the land. Their reason? "The Bible requires it." As explanation, the father and husband, evidently well versed in Scripture, recounted Exodus 23 and Leviticus 25-26. Exodus 23:10 commands: "For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused." (NIV) And God, in Leviticus 25:2, requires that "When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord." (NIV) The land must not be relentlessly pressed into service to produce.

In my own family's weekly sabbath observance, we have come to learn the value of the sabbath as a time of recuperation, rejuvenation, and restoration -- a time to get off the treadmill and pull everything together again. The sabbath has a similar value for the land.

There is a long-standing rabbinical saying, "Turn it about, turn it about, for everything you need to know is in it." In applying this to the land's sabbath -- as we turn things over in our minds, and ponder them deeply -- we ask, "Is the land simply the soil? Does it not also include the earthworms, the birds, and the other creatures?" Such "turning it about" will show that "land," as the Bible uses it, refers to a fully operating part of God's Creation, that is, it includes all the creatures in it. The land and its creatures must be given their sabbath rests, also.

Our "turning it about" will also lead us to consider sabbaths for non-agricultural parts of Creation, such as rivers, ponds, and marshes. It will also lead us to make proper preparations for the land's sabbaths. Pondering God's requirement for a sabbath for the land, as for the sabbath day, is fertile ground for deep and continuing discussion.

When I asked the Neerlandian farm family why they let their land rest every second year, instead of every seventh, this strong family of the Word directed me to the New Testament. "Remember Christ's teaching about how the sabbath of the week is made for people, not the other way around?" they asked. "Well, the same is true for the land. The sabbath is made for the land, and not the land for the sabbath."

"But why every second year?" I asked. The farmers' answer? "Because that is what the land needs -- anything less wouldn't help."

What they were telling me was that with limited rainfall, and this high latitude, the land would be degraded were they to force it to produce more often.

Today, as I travel through the countryside and across continents, I see some lands that need rest: some every seven years, some every other year, and some permanent sabbath. I also see once-occupied lands now desolate, and the words of Leviticus 26:35 reverberate in my mind: "All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbath you lived in it." (NIV) If we fail to give Creation times of rest and recuperation, Creation will take its own enforced rest -- and may no longer support us. It is a biblical truth to ponder.

As the weekly sabbath is made for people and animals, the so sabbath for the land is made for the wider Creation. These sabbaths are some of God's provisions for keeping and protecting people, families, animals, and all Creation from being relentlessly pressed. May the parts of Creation under your care enjoy their sabbath rests!

Reprinted from Lutheran Woman Today magazine: April 1994, pages 38-39. Revised.

Please mail any comments to Dr. Mark Lassiter.