Uncommon Wisdom

 
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 19:9-10

REFLECTION:
The longer I live, and the more I study the Bible, the more I become convinced that the timeless messages there put us in direct conflict with the prevailing "wisdom" of our time.

This is nothing new, of course...the wisdom of the Bible challenges and changes people of every time. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow; and people are people, wherever they go, and whenever they live. We live in this tension just as previous generations have; there's the "common wisdom" that guides human activities, and then there is the divine wisdom that reminds us of what a healthy life looks like.

One piece of "common" wisdom is: get the most out of something that you can. If you are a manager, squeeze every second of productivity out of your workers that you can. If you are worker, squeeze every second of productivity out of your day as you can, to please your boss and move ahead of your colleagues. If you own a company, keep looking for efficiencies and corners to cut in order to squeeze out every penny of profit possible. If you are a farmer, harvest every last item, pick every last grape in order to squeeze out every penny of profit possible. 

Except, this wisdom is not leading us to a healthy life, either individually or collectively. Individually, we even let this way of thinking guide our decisions with our time both inside and outside the workplace. We fill every last moment with volunteering, kids activities, you name it. If we are vacation, many of us schedule every last second of it with sight-seeing. How often have you heard someone say, or said yourself, "I need a vacation from my vacation!"

Read the passage above again. The instruction is clear; don't squeeze every last penny of profit out of your field or vineyard. Leave some for those who are in need who will sneak in in the middle of the night to glean some to survive.

This seems counter-productive, but we have to wrestle with the fact that this is a COMMAND from God. It IS counter-productive. Maybe productivity isn't the highest good.

While this certainly has implications socially, I am choosing to sit with this wisdom as I contemplate my days, and how I spend my time. Is productivity the highest good? Absolutely not. God wants our wholeness. God wants us to be who we have been created to be, as we discussed yesterday in church. If this is true (and it is), I was not created to be a producer and a consumer.

So, who were you created to be? What makes you tick? What do you LOVE doing? That might be the Spirit of God, nudging you to do more of that thing and less of others. Don't glean the entire field or pick every grape! Take time for rest, and for the things that make you who God created you to be.

PRAYER:
God, give us the courage to say "no" to some things in order to say "yes" to who you created us to be. Help us to take time today for rest, for prayer, and for spending time in silence. Help us to hear your voice through all the other noise. Amen.