In our country, where God has provided such abundance of foods, we know very little of gleaners. Our great wheat fields are mown in summer time, the wheat tied in great bundles: then it is thrashed right in the fields, and taken to the granaries. The many ears left on the ground are eaten by the fowls or go to waste.
But not so in the eastern countries, which are thickly inhabited. When the wheat has been cut and gathered in, the poor send their children, or go themselves, to pick up every ear of wheat they can find left behind. It will be carefully rubbed between the hands, the grain used for food during the winter months, and the straw to fill their mattresses for their beds.
We read in God’s Word that He forbade His people, the Israelites, when they should come into their land, to go after the reapers in the fields to gather what might have been left behind, but on the contrary, they were to leave for the poor the corners of the fields; also in the vineyards, they were not to gather all the grapes, but leave some for those who had none.
God had given them the land, and all its riches, and He wanted His people to remember it, and provide for those who had less. So should we, for whom God has done so much.
Everything we receive is from His long hand, and He wants us to show our appreciation by sharing with others.
ML 10/11/1931