The Blessing of Margin

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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.
- from Leviticus 19:9-10

Preserving margin blesses both the people keeping the margin and their community.

Let’s start with the people who choose to keep margin. How do they benefit from the practice?

Preserving margin affects the way you work. If you know you only get one pass through your field or your grapevines, you might work more slowly and deliberatively. Focus replaces the hectic rush. And you have a clear end point. Without commands like the one in today’s passage, you might revisit the field again and again and again, searching for some overlooked grain or some missed grape. The practice of preserving margin protects us from the exhausting diminishing returns of over-functioning.

But that’s not the only way preserving margin blesses the margin-keeper. Keeping margin helps us learn to live within our means. It gives us flexibility during times of emergency. It creates an environment where we can grow in our trust of the Lord.

And our margin keeping spills out to bless people around us. We see that in today’s passage. When the ancient Israelites chose to leave food on the edges of their fields, this food provided for the poor and for immigrants (who didn’t have fields of their own).

This system of laws around margin both provided for people in need and protected their dignity. They were blessed with both food and the opportunity to work for their food. They didn’t have to ask for help or wait for someone to approve their application for aid. Landowners couldn’t uncouple their responsibility to care for the poor from their obedience to the Lord.

How has the practice of preserving margin blessed you? How have you been blessed by someone else’s practice of preserving margin in their life?

1 Comment

"The practice of preserving margin protects us from the exhausting diminishing returns of over-functioning." Over-functioning. So that is the name of what so often exhausts me. Dotting all the "i's", crossing all the "t's"...(often that is literal!)

We had company yesterday and I left the dust to rest and the basket of laundry waiting. Margin things, right? And that left margin in my energy to devote to our company. Wow, this applies in so many areas of life. Behind it all I see that resting in Jesus, going with Jesus, stopping when He stops--that--HE-is the best preserver of margin. Thanks for this!

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