Building mission into society

Leviticus 19 verses 9 & 10 give a very important principle: leave some slack that others can freely pick from. It is gloriously simple - in your natural harvest there is provision for those who would otherwise struggle.

I wonder if the foodbank we opened this week could be considered as an equivalent for our culture of these verses: in your shopping build in some extra capacity that is made freely available to those in need. Both have a sense of building mission into society, i.e. in the way we operate provision is made for those in need. What takes it a level above the welfare state is the active consciousness of it - it is not simply a tax that disappears into the ether, but instead you purposefully leave slack for the benefit of others in your locality.

The Leviticus 19 verses goes against the grain (excuse the pun) of how much of our society operates - since we strive to squeeze out every last fraction of a percent of productivity. Yet right from beginning Israel was taught to create a society that deliberately had some inefficiency, but it was an inefficiency that would enable the society to be richer overall. Mission was built into the way society was to operate.