Leave the Edges for Hope

FIELD UPDATE

There is one combine harvester for the Shariya Complex. When it’s harvest time, it rolls in with a quiet dignity of mission. There is a silent anticipation in the village. There are no grand announcements that it’s harvest week, but somehow tears always well up in my eyes when I see it enter the first field. Harvest is coming, and with that harvest comes responsibility.

Our stables are situated in the old village of Shariya, a village which remains home to broken houses bombed and pushed into the ground by the Baath regime. A village actually bathed in blood. Fields where the voice of the shed blood cries out for justice. A poor village with broken people but with some landowners who practice generosity and kindness towards us.

The stables are surrounded by fields owned by different tribal families. Some are angry if we so much as walk on their property and will not allow anything connected with us to pass through their borders. Not as much as a water pipe. When I walk, I take care not to cross their border for the sake of peace. 

Then there are those who allow us to collect the gleanings of harvest from their well-defined borders marked by large rocks and boulders. No permission is required; we have access to their Edges. And there is one rare neighbour who allows us to go into the middle of his field and take what we need. All of his field.

Today I want to talk about these Edges as described in Leviticus 19 and 23 as acts of holiness and worship.

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleaning of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigners. I am the Lord your God.”

This passage begins with harvesting instructions, but the crux of the matter is covenant, character, and identity. It is about generosity as an act of worship, one that cannot be mixed up with the economic currency of this present day and season. It’s about obedience, and a trust that transcends all seasons and times of human history.

When in obedience, we leave the edges, the wheat and the grapes for the poor and the marginalised, we demonstrate that our identity and trust is in the provision of God. When we hoard, when the Edges are not calculated into our finance, our statement is one of trust in ourselves and our ability to govern our finances, which I think, as the days grow harder, we will find harder to manage or even financially cope with.

Amidst all the specifics and details of Leviticus 23, the instruction for harvesting and leaving the edges appears again. An act of worship. Everything is detailed in this chapter, but no additional instruction for harvesting is given other than “do not reap to the very edges.” For one of our neighbours there are no edges; for the other, the edges extend into the very heart of his field. Into the heart of his economic well-being.

God gives no information on the size of Edges. I find that the size of my trust defines the size of my edges. Trust, particularly in a season of so many “unknowns,” so much “shaking,” is part of my covenant relationship with a God who sees and provides. How wide are my edges? How do I define my edges? Resources and provision for others, of course. I can include my time, family, friends, the one who needs my help, going the additional mile as we say.

Isaiah 58 fortifies the Leviticus concept and speaks to the one who has not shared his food with the poor, has not clothed the naked, has not given justice. God basically says, “Forget your fasting; I need your Edges.” Pick up everything else, and from that which remains is the tithe and offering. Calculate all after the Edges.

Edges are an act of worship for me. An act of empowerment for the one who gleans and picks up. Think of Boaz and Ruth. What everlasting legacy came from a Moabitess gleaning in a Hebrew field. One who was banned, one who was an outcast, yet from her union with Boaz, who left his “edges” for her, came a king.

Friends, you are right, I do not usually talk about finance. We live in this place of Edges; our community life is the same as our generous neighbour. Come in and take what you need, of our resources, our time, whatever we have is for you. Go to the sewing room and take clothes. Extra time is needed with a student; our edges extend into our private time because edges take precedence.

I write this today, dear friends, because in our time of harvest as we leave for others, we ask to be part of your Edges. We ask to glean in your fields. We ask that you leave some grapes for us to pick up. Because just as Boaz and Ruth wrote legacy in the margins of his fields, we need to continue to write legacy here on the plains of Nineveh.

God bless your Edges.