IT are the needs I hear about, I observe, I am burdened for almost on a daily basis, certainly on a weekly one. The last one that really got me was The Amazing Race. Yes, a TV show. The teams raced to Bangladesh. And I'm watching the show and knowing, as my heart started beating faster, that the minute the camera crews panned the city they landed in I would be done for. Sure enough. The minute the teams stepped outside the airport and cabbed in to the city and I got a glimpse of the streets I discovered tears streaming down my face. My youngest redhead patted my arm and said, "Oh Mommy. It's so bad. Mommy where are the women and girls?" We saw together the trash and the filth and the poverty both in material possessions and soul. And we saw together that there were no women, no girls. Where were they? I didn't know what I could do except step up and enter into the life of one. After all, it only takes one domino to tip them all over right? And so I logged on to Compassion that night and I found the oldest girl that had been waiting the longest time for a family to enter in to life with her in some way and she became a part of our family. One girl in Bangladesh is now getting education, food, medical care and so is her family. One girl now will have a chance.
The corners of my life is something I think about pretty much everyday and try to be mindful of. The idea of keeping corners in my life comes from Deuteronomy 24:19-21 in the New Living Translation (NLT) and it says, “When you are harvesting your crops and forget to bring in a bundle of grain from your field, don’t go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigners, orphans, and widows. Then the Lord your God will bless you in all you do. When you beat the olives from your olive trees, don’t go over the boughs twice. Leave the remaining olives for the foreigners, orphans, and widows. When you gather the grapes in your vineyard, don’t glean the vines after they are picked. Leave the remaining grapes for the foreigners, orphans, and widows.” To break that down what God is saying is that whatever kind of harvest you are bringing in don't go back and gather what may have been overlooked, left behind, or dropped. Leave it as provision for the foreigners, orphans, and widows. Leave a corner of your field as provision for others.
A few years ago I read those verses and I was so struck by the implications and by the intent that I began to think about corners of my life and how they could be provision for others. About the same time a video came out that talked about corners. How odd right? *wink* Check out the video that helped define my thoughts.
In my own life I have expanded the concept of leaving a corner. Yes, there is a very real material/physical poverty in this world that needs to be met, but the emotional and spiritual poverty in this world is just as real and perhaps even more pervasive than the material/physical. Those three types of poverty: material/physical, emotional, and spiritual have needs that each of us can help meet, if only we will leave a corner in our lives for them.
I look at my life and I examine myself. Do I have a corner available not just for the "least of these" in material/physical poverty but the "least of these" that are in emotional and spiritual poverty as well? Have I left a corner of my life available to meet all the different kinds of poverty that people experience as God empowers and equips me to?
Meeting IT can seem overwhelming. We live in a culture that discounts the small or barely noticeable and only acknowledges the loud, the grandiose, the over-the-top. So we shrink back from extending the Dixie cup size of water to the thirsty because our culture doesn't acknowledge it as enough. But it is enough. In some cases it is more than enough! Check out what Jesus says about this in Matthew 10 in The Message, "We are intimately linked in this harvest work. Anyone who accepts what you do, accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts my Father, who sent me. Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God’s messenger. Accepting someone’s help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I’ve called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing.” (vs. 40-42) Don't be overwhelmed, open up corners as you are prompted - the size of the corners that open in your life are going to vary according to the needs God knows are going to be presented to you. And when you leave the corners available for gleaning you will see the gift of God's provision.
Part of the reason God has told us to leave corners untouched so they can be gleaned is so we maintain gratitude for the way he has provided for us. In the day-to-day grind we can easily lose sight of how we are taken care of. This past year I've been focusing on gratitude. And it's kinda hard. Some days I sit there racking my brain for anything that I was thankful for that day. It's sad to say some days I can't come up with anything. But eventually I do. There have been some days that I have realized how grateful I am for something and God has followed it up with, "Okay, so whatcha gonna do about it? How are you going to pay that forward?" I've learned that those are corners he is directing me to. He's calling attention to corners in my life that are ready to be gleaned. One day I realized how grateful I was for literacy. And as I was sharing my Gratitude Attitude about literacy I realized it was a corner in my life and I needed to invite people to glean from it. So I pursued literacy tutoring in my city and now I am a literacy tutor and helping kids learn how to read so they can have confidence in their education and future careers. Through tutoring that corner in my life is being gleaned.
The corners God asks us to leave open for others don't have to be "super spiritual", it's about meeting a need. Let God be the one who decides how it will provide in that person's life. Be available to be a corner for the material/physical needs, the emotional needs, and the spiritual needs of others. Invite them to glean
