Mind Your Margins
Leviticus 19:9-10 – ‘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. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.’
These verses are about reaping and harvesting crops which is something that the early readers of this text would have been familiar with. It’s relevance to many of us today is not in the literal application. I don’t grow barley or wheat in my garden, but there are edges and margins in my life that I can be mindful of. Margins like spaces in my diary – if my time is the field that I harvest from, how do I spend it? If I reap to the edges of my diary, as if every precious second is mine to do what I want with, what space outside my devotional rhythms am I leaving for the Holy Spirit to be at work? Do I leave spaces for allowing other things to flourish? With this in mind, here are three thoughts inspired by these two verses around minding your margins:
- Being mindful of your margins, pushes against the entitlement spirit of our age. The entitlement spirit is particularly deceptive and appealing because it plays on what is, could or should be yours. Yet, if all we do is chase everything that we think should be ours, we walk perilously close to being self-absorbed and a glutton for wealth and entitlement. Matthew Henry suggests that these verses are the antithesis to entitlement, as they encourage us; ‘not [to] be covetous and griping, and greedy of everything we can lay any claim to; nor insist upon our right in things small and trivial’. The Kingdom trait of being mindful of our margins, removes any sort of entitlement foothold we leave available for our enemy to exploit.
- Being mindful of your margins, invites your future into your world. Is your busyness or ‘productivity’ preventing your future from coming into your today? If Boaz had instructed his harvesters to make sure they gleaned every last barley grain, would his future (Ruth), have stopped and gleaned in his field when she walked into his world? A faith-filled, generous spirit isn’t just nurtured in the giving (to Ruth when she’s arrived), it could be through the leaving for Ruth, you are sowing for the future even though Ruth hasn’t turned up yet. If we want to share the gospel with people, or to pray for those who are sick and see them recover, we need to leave margins of availability for those Ruths.
- Being mindful of your margins, creates space for revelation. Consider what happens in the margins of the field? It’s not just the space that is left for the poor and the foreigner, it’s where nature will thrive. The first readers would have seen nature up close in the margins of their fields. It’s interesting how often nature is suggested as an image for consideration within the scriptures. Anyone who knows me, will know I have a love for nature, it’s always been there, but since becoming a Christian, it’s become a springboard of awe and wonder, channelled into worship. As Richard Rohr suggests ‘Creation is our first and final cathedral. Nature is the one song that never stops singing’. There is increasing awareness and recognition of the wellbeing benefits of engaging with nature, so can I encourage you, create space in your margins for a walk in nature, and when you do, walk slowly, listen and look around you, by doing that, you will create opportunity to hear and see a sparrow, that small unglamourous bird, is a beacon, revealing and reminded you afresh of your value to God.
My hope and prayer is that through these few words, you will mind your margins to push against entitlement, invite your future in and create space to know God more. Amen.
Eddie Rich
