9 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. 

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.

Now we move to one of the hospitality laws of Ancient Israel, which was that any person who grew a field of produce must leave the corners unharvested, freely available to the poor and to the foreigner, who might gain sustenance in their time of need. This, of course, would be integral to the story of Ruth, who met her future husband Boaz by gleaning in his field, as she tried to sustain both herself and her mother-in-law Naomi.

This represents a perpetual sacrifice to the greater good. The farmer who grew the field would gain no direct benefit from leaving part of his field unharvested. Whether the poor were sustained or perished would likely have very little effect upon him. But it would help the health of the community as a whole. It would provide an opportunity to those who most needed it. It would foster a greater sense of unity and quell antisocial acts by those who were most desperate. It would improve the economy of the nation as a whole. Surely, then, that would have positive effects on the farmer’s generations, even if not immediately to him in the moment of his sacrifice.

This is the principle of planting the tree that you will not be around to feel the shade of, going to war to die for the freedoms of people you will never know, or doing an act of kindness in secret so that no one can repay you. It is doing good to make the world better, to make things better for our children and our community but not gaining any personal benefit from it. Well, aside from the most important benefit: the purifying of our own soul and gaining an invitation to the table of the Lord.