Welcome back PPN Families, and a warm welcome to the families that are joining us for the first time.

Can you believe January is already over? Seems like yesterday that we had just welcomed in the new year. But friends, this new year feels different, it feels special in a way.

As you may know our school is turning 50 this year. That’s 50 years’ worth of reports, of math’s lessons and newsletters. We’ve come a long way in those 50 years, new classrooms, more students and more ways to show how God has worked through every single one of those years. Think of all the generations that have passed through these halls, how many lives have been impacted by this school, and how many now send their children to experience learning in a place so loved by its staff, community and especially loved by God.

In the Bible, 50 years marked a very special time for Gods people, it was The Year of Jubilee.

¹⁰ Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors and return to your own clan. 11 This fiftieth year will be a jubilee for you. During that year you must not plant your fields or store away any of the crops that grow on their own, and don’t gather the grapes from your unpruned vines. 12 It will be a jubilee year for you, and you must keep it holy. But you may eat whatever the land produces on its own. 13 In the Year of Jubilee each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors.

Leviticus 25:10-13 NLT

This was a time of rest, not just for the people but for the land. They weren’t to grow anything or harvest and store any of it away, they had to let the ground replenish itself. Without all the pruning the vines would grow the way they wanted, and the wildflowers would have a chance to cover the fields. What a beautiful sight that could have been. Also, everyone was to return to their place of ancestry and if they owned land that belonged to another family they were to sell it back to them at a fair price. Imagine all those families reuniting with each other, a generation meeting a new one.

As we reflect on the past 50 years, let us also see 2024, this 50^th year, as a year of Jubilee. Though we can’t exactly take a whole year off, as much as we would like to, we can be creative about how we choose to rest. It could be picking up that devotional we bought a while ago or having weekend family picnics enjoying time in nature. Let us also make this year a time we spend more with family, going to visit the grandparents you don’t see as often or that cousin that lives somewhere you can’t quite pronounce. I myself will be going back to my mum’s home island of Sabu, Indonesia to visit family I haven’t seen in over 10 years. I even have a nephew and niece that I’ve never met. I know how healing and emotional that time will be, and I can hardly wait, trust me the countdown has already begun.

God wanted this time of jubilee to be a time of reconnection, to forgive one another and allow God to work so that we don’t take it all upon ourselves. We don’t know for sure what 2024 holds, but what we do know it that God will be with us - just as he has been here at Prescott Primary Northern for the past 50 years and for the next.

Many blessings,

Pr Andy