Today's Devotional

November 25,  2005

Subject:  What To Do With Leftovers

Leviticus 19:10 "And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather [every] grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I [am] the LORD your God."

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So its the day after Thanksgiving and many of you might think you'll never eat again. That will change, but in the meantime, you've got a ton of food left so what do you do with it?  Well I'm glad you asked.

In our day of excess and "getting all you can" and "canning all you get," it's quite interesting to take a look at the scriptural imperative for how we are to behave in regards to the poor.  Instead of us calling them shiftless, slothful and lazy, over and over again in the biblical text, believers are commanded to have compassion on them.  In the old testament passage above, people with vineyards actually were commanded as part of the law to leave some for strangers and the poor when they were gathering in the crop.

These days instead of putting up figurative "no trespassing" signs, we should leave some of our "grapes" for the poor.  Of course many people are helping out at this time of year, but if we keep this mindset, I'll bet the impact in June and July and about 8 other months of the year would be tremendous.  

After Thanksgiving Day, we still have much to be grateful for and while we want to give God our "firstfruits" we can show our gratitude to Him also by what we do with our leftovers.

Carlen