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 A few years ago Canadian writer Mike Mason (author of The Mystery of Marriage, The Gospel According to Job, etc.) launched what he called "an experiment in joy": he made up his mind to be joyful in the Lord every day for ninety days. A moody person by nature, for him this was a radical experiment that changed his life. Throughout the ninety days he kept a journal, which eventually became a book on joy entitled Champagne for the Soul.
What follows is part of a series of ten excerpts from that book (now in a new edition by Regent College Publishing, available through Amazon.ca).
Consecrate the fiftieth year
and proclaim liberty throughout the land
to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you. Leviticus 25:10 Among the rich family of words related to joy (joyful, joyous, enjoy, rejoice, jocund, jovial, jubilant) is the word jubilee. In the Old Testament the Jubilee was a special year-long celebration that occurred every fiftieth year. At least, this was the Lord's command. There's no record of the Israelites ever actually observing a Jubilee, and we in our commerce-driven society can easily understand why. In the Year of Jubilee all bondmen were to be freed, all agricultural land was to be left fallow, and all property was to revert free of charge to its original owners. The Jubilee was to be a Sabbath of Sabbaths, an entire year devoted to rest and freedom.
After centuries of refusing to observe these sweeping demands, the Israelites were finally driven into exile for seventy years. The book of 2 Chronicles closes with a fascinating comment on this period: The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed (36:21). Can you hear the sigh of relief in the land? Can you imagine the sigh in your own spirit if you took more time for rest?
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The biblical Jubilee was like a year-long experiment in joy. It was a fast from sadness and bondage, an invitation to set aside every other goal in order to enthrone pure joy as the centerpiece of life. What if we tried this in our culture? What if you tried it in your personal life?
God's idea of Jubilee was not that the other forty-nine years would be without joy, but that in order to live consistently in joy people need to set aside times especially devoted to it. Because joy and freedom tend to get swept under the carpet by the dreary pragmatism of existence, periodically we need a shake-up. We need regular reminders of the central importance of joyous freedom in the Christian life.
If the Israelites had given the Jubilee its proper place, would they have returned afterwards to business-as-usual? No, for an entire year of joy would have changed the tenor of their hearts. No doubt they'd have returned to buying and selling and working the land as usual, but this ordinary life would be so transformed that it would not seem ordinary anymore.
We need our Sabbaths and holidays. We also need more extended times of sabbatical. Rest is one of our basic requirements, and so is joy. We sleep regularly, but how regularly do we rejoice? Having grown so poor in the art of joy, shouldn't we be blocking out special times for its observance? Christmas is one such time, yet how often is the joy of Christmas crowded out by the season's busy demands?
Unobserved, joy languishes. All too easily we slip into believing that joy is unnecessary, that our days can readily flow along without it, or without much of it, and that perhaps life was never meant to be enjoyed but merely survived. Making joy a priority seems as radical as restoring all land to its original owners.
How do you think of joy? Is it like the Year of Jubileewildly impractical, even silly, an archaic custom described in a quaint old book?
God's intention in the massive Jubilee land shuffle was clear: The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine (Leviticus 25:23). Your heart is also His. You're His child and He intends you to be happy and free. Will you give Him back what is rightfully His and so take hold of the joy that is rightfully yours?
September 27/2007
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