Gleaning: it's not your modern day welfare

When we skim in our reading, we glean. That is to say, we freely survey a small portion of something larger, fuller, richer, and more valuable. When you read that introductory chapter of the book, you're gleaning. Gleaning is about tasting, not indulging; touching, not embracing. The concept dates back to antiquity and the religious requirement to leave the outermost portion of one's fields unharvested so that widows, poor people, and sojourners without work would not perish in the land, but rather that they would find ample supply of resources to keep them alive and cared for because of their neighbors' reflective kindness of their God - provided the gleaners did the work of going out to the fields with everyone else and gleaning. 

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Don't be mistaken, gleaning is not like modern day welfare payments. Real work alongside everyone else was required. Do you know the life of Ruth? Some many decades before David, King of Israel, was born, his great relative was a widow in a foreign land, with no property of her own, without her blood family, and being of no economic status (having been out of the land for years during a famine, it's likely her mother-in-law's family estate was in ruins). You could say she was the epitome of the category for which gleaning was established. 

Gleaning's value is revealed in Ruth's response to the dire situation she and Naomi are in. She went to the fields of her own volition - not knowing whether her neighbors would be faithful to the gleaning law, especially after years of famine. You might suspect there would be some who were storing up everything they could in barns upon barns, just in case something like a flood of famine returned in their day. Ruth had the faith to go and work hard, and her ethic was reported. In fact, everyone around knew she was of greater value than seven sons. In antiquity, your wealth came from property, and your family size determined a lot about how much of that property would produce quality crop. To have seven sons would have been something of renown, a prize symbolic of God's favor. Thus, though the statement about Ruth's value was metaphoric, its truth is not diminished. Ruth took action, and her discipline was rewarded.

Ruth's multifaceted obedience and words evidence her knowledge of God as a true and loyal lover who never lies when announcing he cares for the hungry husbandless handmaiden. Her unwillingness to abandon Naomi reveals much about her knowledge of God's unwillingness to abandon his own people and her hopefulness toward his response to her demonstration of that knowledge.  You see, gleaning has a lot in common with the Christian in today's economic situation. Often, we tend to think that God's ability to manifest his glory is determined by the direness of our situation, and to some extent that is true. God glorifies himself through the exaltation of the humble. He shows his great power through our great weakness. But, this is often misconstrued.

The logic is often expressed in prayer for God to "show up" and save - to provide the student great blessing on the test or the worker great favor on the project or the entrepreneur on the deal or the pastor on the sermon or the scientist on the research or the athlete in the competition. The unspoken, however, is often the matter of responsibility of the individual to prepare the way of the Lord. The good man John the Baptizer knew this. Ruth evidenced it. We do not live in a world apart from God's working. And, God's very laws are evidence of his imminent involvement. His very blessing is in reality's fabric. This is why you ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss. The believer asks, having already been looking to God in obedience to him. That's why he continues to petition, because he's been following and obeying, loyally trusting God to manifest the righteousness of covenant-keeping. 

When the believer doesn't prepare for the test, doesn't work hard/smart on the project, doesn't cover as many angles of the deal as he could, doesn't pray/study/practice to present the Gospel, doesn't rigorously conduct his testing, or control his diet/exercise/practice regimen in a disciplined manner, then it's tantamount to unbelief. When he then calls on God to provide, he's saying, I didn't faithfully live thankfully there, but I want you to put things my way here (because I can't given what I did). In fact, that kind of believer actually thinks that, had they done the aforementioned, they would be in better control of things. If they had the money, the brains...the riches/wisdom/strength, then they would win the race. But, we should know better, that's not to whom the race goes. The race goes to whomever God gives it.Thus, the whole of the believer's life is something like gleaning, gleaning on the field of God's favor, eating the manna of his pleasure and experiencing the grace of his provision.

To evidence the Godful life of the obedient gleaner, believers ought to consider the significance of loving God with all their mind and might. Hard-work, of the physical, intellectual, or hybrid kind, you see, is faith. It's the kind that expects reward. It's the kind God points to with blessing, as in the case of Ruth. It's not a matter of earning the reward for the work, it's a matter of expecting the certain, unearned reward of faith and working as a result. The believer who wants the job and does nothing does not respect the Lord. The believer who just expects God to make circumstances change without the work of faith does not respect the Lord in so doing. Honoring God means realizing he can always change your circumstances and does not do so for his good pleasure. He's giving you a manner for maturing - by revealing himself in faithfulness after the work is done, after you've stopped sitting idle. Why does the farmer get his yield? Because he worked the land? No. He gets his yield because God brings the growth. He works the land because he has faith.

So be glad and get moving, for as Newton said to Wilberforce, "You have work to do."