Gleaning

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When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop.
‭‭Leviticus‬ ‭19:9‬ ‭NLT‬‬

While reading through Leviticus, the passage above got me thinking. It refers to the practice of gleaning, leaving some of the field unharvested so those without land (mainly poor and foreigners) could gather food for themselves.

In the business world, the doctrine of profit above all else is almost law. But God is calling us to something different. The question is, in today’s society, what does this look like?

I don’t have any specific answers, but want to challenge us as entrepreneurs and intrapraneurs, because the decisions we make in our organizations will directly and indirectly impact the economic outlook of many, especially those with less.

We may not leave grain lying around, but in this day of increasing executive pay funded by staff cuts, we can – and should – distribute the benefits (usually profit) to all participants, rather than having them accumulate so heavily at the top.

Here are a few areas to consider:

• Who we hire
• How much we pay
• Where we source supplies from
• How we price out product or service

Thinking through this further, it could even apply to our time. Rather than scheduling our days to the brim, we can leave slack time that can be used when a friend calls for help, or when we see the opportunity to do good around us.

I hope that this will encourage us to think about how we can harvest less so others may have enough.

~ Sean