Sharing

The bird netting is down. For me, that declares the end of my tomato season. There are still green tomatoes on the vine, but I am sharing them with the wildlife that calls my backyard home. My last harvested tomato is ripening on my table. Soon it will be a delicious sandwich, my last until next summer.

I struggle a little with not picking every possible tomato from my garden. It feels wasteful somehow. There is a part of me that feels I should gather as much as I can and leave nothing to “waste.” There is another part of me that senses this is greed and a result of scarcity fears. And is it really “waste” to let the animals have some tomatoes? Didn’t God grow plants for them as well?

Interestingly, it is not the squirrels who are eating my tomatoes. Even without the ruby kisses hiding the plants (I have uprooted them), even with the netting down, the squirrels are staying out of the garden. Even I can smell the pungent marigolds over the fragrant tomatoes.

I suspect a deer, even though I haven’t seen one and I live a block off a major road. That my tomatoes could be feeding a deer brings me great joy. Nick was a very successful hunter; deer have fed my family for years. It only seems fitting that I should return the favor, repay the gift in some small way.

When God through Moses established a covenant community agreement with his people, He made sharing the last of the crop law.

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyards bear, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 19:9-10.

I don’t really have any poor or alien peoples in my back yard, nor do I have a big enough garden to invite them in. But I do have wildlife. Birds and bunnies, foxes, coyotes, squirrels and chipmunks, and, apparently, deer. I can share God’s gifts with them.

Can I expand this act of sharing to other areas of my life? Can I live with my hands more open?

Certainly Jesus lived that way. He was not concerned over matching linens or marble countertops. He was not concerned about gathering up as much as He could while He could. When the disciples gave him 5 loaves, He shared it with 5000 people. (Matt, 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, and John 6.) He shared His time and His life generously with all people. He instructed us to give to everyone who asks (Matt. 5), not to worry about food and clothing (Matt. 6), and to lay up our treasures in heaven not on earth. (Matt.6).

Jesus call us to practice gleaning, sharing on a universal scale.

What would it look like if we didn’t feel the need to hoard things for our own use? Could I actually share all the clothes I don’t wear with someone who might need them? Could some of the food in my pantry go to Second Harvest? (Great name, by the way!). Could the gleanings from my investment account change a needy person’s life?

Amazing things can happen when we follow God’s directives to share what He has given us.

Boaz was a landowner simply following God’s gleaning laws, when he noticed Ruth, probably the most famous gleaner in the Bible.

She is the Moabite who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. She said, “please let me glean and gather behind the reapers.” So she has came, and she has been on her feet from early this morning until now, without resting for even a moment. Ruth 2:6-7

Ruth, the foreign woman working in the field, great-grandmother to King David.

Open your hand today. Share what God has given you. And watch our amazing God at work.

Betsy