Share Your Cookies

Leviticus 23:22

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the LORD your God.

I want a wide “justice margin” in my life. Reading this passage convicts me. I don’t have a field, but I think I get the point. Share!

The farmer is told to do two things.

First: Harvest with margin. Don’t go all the way to the edges of your field and don’t go over the field again and again. In other words, leave some produce behind.

Second: Share with blessing. The farmer is to welcome the destitute and outsiders onto his property to glean what the harvesters have left.

In practical 21st century terms he is to live well-within his means and serve the needs of others with the surplus. This is the benevolence system of God’s ancient people. Everyone who has property is required to live with a justice margin.

This simple approach accomplishes several things:

• It meets peoples’ needs – they all get to eat.
• It preserves human dignity – the poorest work as gatherers too
• It enables generosity – the landowner serves his neighbours
• It engenders community – rich and poor depend on each other
• It reminds us all that we are dependent upon God – God grows the produce

The people of God need to do exactly the same thing today. We need to receive our harvest (“salary”) and apply the principle of a justice margin. It is wrong to assume that every improvement in my personal finances gives me more privilege to do what I want.

There was a farmer in one of Jesus’ stories who thought that a big crop gave him the right to build bigger barns rather than share more graciously. He died almost immediately! (Luke 12:16-20)

Receiving a “salary” instead of “planting a field” can cloud my thinking. But I believe my salary and the farmer’s harvest are essentially the same thing. If I happen to own a lot of land or have a big salary I have a bigger responsibility to care for others.

I need a healthy justice margin just the same as these landowners. I need to do the same two things:

1. Live within my salary leaving a healthy surplus
2. Welcome the needy into my life to be served and blessed

If we all got paid in cookies it might be clearer. God would say: "Don’t eat to the bottom of the packet. Leave some cookies. Pass the packet and let others who can’t get any cookies have some." Everyone needs cookies and God has made enough to go around!

Questions

• Do you think the Bible's wisdom is practical today? Why?
• What challenges does this thinking present for you? Does it require you to change?