Ruth 2:7

Gleaners

Let me glean... and gather after the reapers among the sheaves. Ruth 2:7.

There was a wonderful French painter called Millet. When he was a boy he was quite poor, his father being just what we in this country call a “crofter” When little Jean Millet sat down to dinner, it was at a very bare, homely table. But what did that matter? Jean had eyes that saw everything and he had a heart that loved those round about him. He saw old women gleaning in the harvest fields and he noticed that they looked tired and weary. And he noticed, too, that many field workers were very good and very reverent. When the Angelus, or call for evening prayer, rang out across the fields Jean watched the men take off their caps and close their eyes as if they prayed, while the women bowed their heads and looked solemn. In course of time, Jean became an artist, and painted a famous picture called “The Angelus.” You must have seen a print of it: there are many of them all over the country. He also painted another called “The Gleaners.” Those who visit country districts in France, and see the men and women working in the harvest fields, cannot help thinking of those two pictures of Millet's, “The Angelus” and “The Gleaners” Through them the world has learnt to know and love the French peasantry.

But, boys and girls, there are pictures that are not painted on canvas. There are pictures painted in words- and in the Book of Ruth you will find a beautiful word, picture of a gleaner. It is finer than Millet's. Millet's work may become old-fashioned; people may one day speak of him as belonging to a past age. But the Bible picture of “Ruth the Gleaner” will be admired and loved as long as time lasts.

Gleaners had a real place in the Jewish harvest field. In our country, they would be spoken to sharply, and sent home. But there was an old Hebrew law about gleaning. Listen while I read it. “When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them for the poor, and for the stranger.... When thou reapest thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to find it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands.”

Ruth took her place among the poor and the strangers, the widowed and the orphaned in the fields of yellow barley.

She had to find food for herself and her old mother-in-law, Naomi, and as she had not the money to buy it she went bravely and humbly to gather the stray ears which the reapers left. And Boaz, the master of the field, who had heard of Ruth's splendid devotion to her mother-in-law, arranged that Ruth's gleanings should be many. He commanded the harvesters to let her glean among the standing sheaves. He even told them to drop intentionally some extra ears of corn where she might pick them up.

You can picture the scene, can't you? There is a wonderful poem written by Keats to a nightingale, and in it he gives us his idea of that picture. He thinks of Ruth as listening to the nightingale while she gleans. Here is what he says:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

(Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale.”)

You see Keats pictured Ruth shedding tears of homesickness at the song of the sweet-throated bird. But I think that if Ruth shed tears at all that day they were tears of joy, tears of gratitude and thankfulness.

“Ruth, the Gleaner,” is an old time story. But during these September days, I hope many of you may have an opportunity of being in a harvest field. There is no fun like the fun of playing among the “stooks.” Long ago, how we used to love to hear the swish of the scythe, and watch the women gathering the corn, and binding the sheaves. You will not, I fear, see a real gleaner like Ruth. The gleaner in the field you visit will probably be just a boy with a big rake.

Take a good look at that boy. It may be worth your while. Underneath his silence there may be much that is worth copying. If a big person asked a Scottish “rake” how he liked his work, the answer would probably be as curt as “Fine.” But the memory of not a few Scottish farm boys has come to be sacred. I knew one who became a great scholar. While he raked silently for he rarely spoke his mind was on his “version,” and when he dreamed dreams which he sometimes did they were of going one day to the University.

“That is all very fine and fanciful,” some boy here may be saying, “but I live in a city tenement, I never see the harvest fields.” Let me tell you of a boy gleaner who never saw them either, a boy whose home was in a top flat. His name was Jim. He attended Sunday School, and one day the teacher put a question the answer to which involved the mention of an obscure classical character. To her surprise Jim answered correctly. “How did you come to know that?” she asked. “Please,” he said, “they were taking in coals to the Academy; I followed the carts, and gathered up all the loose leaves in the yards and read them at home.” Jim was a gleaner, and a good one.

And there was a little Italian fellow, called Michael. His father was a stone-cutter. The first sounds Michael knew were the ring of a hammer, and the working of the chisel in the quarries. He was not a clever scholar. He just kept scribbling everything over with drawings. His father was disappointed and whipped the boy for spoiling the white-washed walls of the house. But whippings did no good. Michael went back to his drawings; he thought it was worth while suffering pain, so long as he could get on. He had made a great friend a boy about his own age, who was learning to be an artist, and whose father had plenty of money. His name was Francesco. Every morning Francesco brought to Michael designs borrowed from his master's studio, and these Michael copied. He made wonderful progress, and in course of time became the great Michael Angelo. But I feel sure that he looked back to those days when he “gleaned” as being very happy days indeed.

In Lanarkshire there was born into a humble home, a boy who was named David. His father's name was Neil Livingstone. When David was quite little, he used to help his mother in the house. He did not quite like this work, and made it a condition that the house door should be kept shut so that the people passing might not see him working. At ten years of age he was sent to work in a factory. With his first earned money, he bought an old Latin Grammar. He propped it up on the back of his spinning frame, and as he went backwards and forwards he learnt little bits by heart. That was “gleaning.” I daresay you have guessed who that boy was. He became the great missionary, David Livingstone.

Boys and girls, this world is a wonderful harvest field. The little flowers! Can't we glean their sweetness? Can't we learn their names? There are men and women, as well as boys and girls, who glean constantly, and in ever so many different fields. They get to know a great deal, yet they themselves feel that they are but beginning to learn. Gleaning is work that makes one feel very happy. I can imagine how Ruth and Naomi would, at the end of the first day's work, thank God for His goodness.

When you go back to school you go to glean in a harvest field. Great reapers have been in front of you, and have left many sheaves. You surely will not throw away your splendid opportunities. And lying before you are the sheaves left by those who most of all wanted to know about God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Boys and girls, will you, along with your school work, try every day to glean a little knowledge of Jesus Christ. If you do, you will grow to be men and women who make the world better.