Forward Movement is an official, non-profit agency of the Episcopal Church whose mission is to create compelling content for Christian living. Since 1935 we have published the quarterly devotional Forward Day by Day, as well as pamphlets, booklets, and books that encourage and nourish people in their lives of prayer and faith.
WEDNESDAY, May 5
Leviticus 19:1-18. You shall not reap to the very edges of your field.
The command against reaping the corners of the field goes back to the primitive belief in spirits who had authority over the land. A place to dwell and food to eat had to be left for them or they would leave the farmer. Now Israel has given the old law a new humanitarian bent: We are not to take everything for ourselves but to leave something for the one less fortunate than we.
To plow the field up to the last furrow, to attempt to scrape the last bit of profit from one's labor, betokens a miserly spirit which in the end works to its own disadvantage. Agricultural science is now awakening to this ecological truth. To drain the potholes and the marshlands, to plow up the submarginal lands, is to create floods and dust bowls.
We need this "concern for the corner" operative in the city as well as the country, and not the contractor who uses the cheapest possible material, replacing one slum with another soon-to-be, or the housing developer who crowds in as many apartments as possible in his highrise. Without concern for the corner we will poison our streams, kill the lakes, pollute the air, and destroy the quality of human living. (1971)
PRAY for the Diocese of Chile (South America)
Ps 72 * 119:73-96; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28; Matthew 6:19-24
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
A Meditation for Pentecost
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