Gleaning for Christ
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Ruth, the Moabitess, was in many respects a model for our American maidens. Too industrious to be ashamed of honest work—too independent to rely on her poor mother for her daily bread—she goes out to the barley-field to glean after the reapers. She knows that it is the custom of the country to leave some stalks of corn for the poor to gather. Boaz also commands his harvesters to "pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up." The wisest of all charities, is that which helps the poor to help themselves.
Ruth has a brave heart and nimble fingers, does not mind a backache or a scratch of her fingers among the brambles; and at sunset she comes home to her mother with an ephah of barley. Proud mother is Naomi as she inquires of the busy-fingered girl, "Where have you gleaned today?"
This is a fitting question for every Christian on a Sunday evening. Equally fit is it for every Sunday-school teacher at the close of his or her day's work. All genuine Bible-study is gleaning. Some of the most nutritious and soul-strengthening truths are unexpected discoveries. We come upon them just where we did not expect to find them. Right in the midst of a catalogue of names in the fourth chapter of Chronicles, we light upon the word "Jabez," the child who was born in sorrow—but proved to be a sunshine and a blessing. That little stroke of Bible history has been a mine of spiritual instruction to many a child of God. There is good gleaning too, in the book of Leviticus—which some careless people set down as a mere catalogue of Jewish upholsteries. Such Bible explorers as Bonar and Arnot and Bushnell and Moody will bring you an "ephah of barley" out of the neglected corners of God's wonderful grain-field. He lets fall many a handful for the benefit of those who believe that every line in their Bibles is inspired, and was written for a purpose. The ministers who never wear out of sermon material, are the men who are never afraid of a backache in searching for a fresh truth.
Genuine work for the ingathering of souls is like Ruth's work in her kinsman's barley-field. It may be described by four P's.
1. In the first place, it is patient. No pastor or Sunday-school teacher is fit for his post, unless he has rubbed the word "can't" out of his vocabulary. The hardest part of all Christian work is to toil a great while with little or no result. It takes a long hammering to break some hearts, and to beat some vital truths into some dull consciences. Unless Ruth had been content to pick up one stalk at a time, she never would have got her bag of barley.
2. The next qualification for a good gleaner is to be painstaking. Ralph Wells will find a hundred kernels of golden grain in a passage which a careless reader will pronounce as empty as the east wind. He will spare no pains either to win some young street youth, who was regarded as a fair candidate for the police station. Christ Jesus took a long journey into the coast of Tyre and Sidon, just to bring a blessing to one poor woman. What pains he took with that bigoted and loose-principled woman of Sychar, until he had probed her heart to the core. The longest of all his recorded conversations was with a person whom his disciples would disdain to notice. If Christians would exercise their ingenuity and set themselves resolutely to work, as Harlan Page did, for the conversion of individual souls, our churches might be doubled every year.
3. All good work comes to nothing which is given up when half done, and not persevering. If Harlan Page had stopped that winter evening talk with young E. H. at the corner of the street before his young friend surrendered to Christ, then that soul might have lost the precious gift of eternal life, and New York lost one of its best pastors. "Why do you tell that boy the same thing twenty times?" "Because," replied Susannah Wesley, "the other nineteen times will go for nothing unless the twentieth time makes the impression." God's Spirit is wonderfully persevering in the conversion and discipline of souls. It required a long process to build up such a man as Paul. A great sculptor never begrudges the chisel strokes which fit his art to shine in the gallery of masterpieces. A Christian is carving for eternity.
4. But no patience, and no painstaking and persevering labor for Jesus will secure the result without the gift of the knees. Prayer brings God to our aid—and then the victory is sure. From Paul's day to this, the men and women who bring in the big sheaves have been "instant in prayer." Out of the hardest fields and the thorniest experiences, a prayerful soul will gather the "ephah" for God's granaries. Brother! sister! have you attained to the four P's in your spiritual training? Then, at the close of life's toils, when you stand up for the final reckoning, you will not be afraid to meet the question, "What have you gleaned today?"
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